Profit Sharing and Peer Reporting

Abstract

Despite the “1/N problem” associated with profit sharing, the empirical literature finds that sharing profits with workers has a positive impact on work team and firm performance. We examine one possible resolution to this puzzle by observing that, although the incentive to work harder under profit sharing is weak, it might be sufficient to motivate workers to report each other for shirking, especially if the workers are reciprocally minded. Our model provides the rationale for this conjecture, and we discuss the results of an experiment finding that workers who share in firm profits are more willing to provide accurate information about their peers to management and that profit sharing is most effective when peer reporting is possible. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2831 . This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.