IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v46y2014i32p3980-3994.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effects of optimism bias in teams

Author

Listed:
  • Jian Wang
  • Xintian Zhuang
  • Jun Yang
  • Jiliang Sheng

Abstract

This article imports a behavioural perspective into a team context to study the effort-coordination problem among agents. Specifically, we investigate how the presence of optimism bias impacts the severity of the free-rider problem, the organizational structure of the team and the compensation contracts offered to agents in equilibrium. The results indicate that all agents become more reluctant to exert effort and the team welfare decreases when some of its agents are optimistic, suggesting that optimism aggravates the free-rider problem in teams. Appointing a team leader makes all agents work harder, and the team benefits more by having the optimistic agent as its leader. These findings are in sharp contrast to the effects of overconfidence as identified in the literature. It is advisable to pay the optimistic agents less than the rational agents. Encouragingly, optimistic agents can learn about their own bias in the long run, leaving their team without too much detriment of optimism.

Suggested Citation

  • Jian Wang & Xintian Zhuang & Jun Yang & Jiliang Sheng, 2014. "The effects of optimism bias in teams," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(32), pages 3980-3994, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:46:y:2014:i:32:p:3980-3994
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2014.948678
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2014.948678
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2014.948678?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gervais, Simon & Odean, Terrance, 2001. "Learning to be Overconfident," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(1), pages 1-27.
    2. de Meza, David & Southey, Clive, 1996. "The Borrower's Curse: Optimism, Finance and Entrepreneurship," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(435), pages 375-386, March.
    3. Cabrales, Antonio & Charness, Gary, 2011. "Optimal contracts with team production and hidden information: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 163-176, February.
    4. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2002. "Breadth of ownership and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 171-205.
    5. Juan-Pedro Gómez & Tridib Sharma, 2006. "Portfolio delegation under short-selling constraints," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 28(1), pages 173-196, May.
    6. Simon Gervais & Anthony W. Lynch & David K. Musto, 2005. "Fund Families as Delegated Monitors of Money Managers," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 1139-1169.
    7. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    8. Pirinsky, Christo, 2013. "Confidence and economic attitudes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 139-158.
    9. Kandel, Eugene & Lazear, Edward P, 1992. "Peer Pressure and Partnerships," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(4), pages 801-817, August.
    10. de la Rosa, Leonidas Enrique, 2011. "Overconfidence and moral hazard," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 429-451.
    11. Battaglini, Marco, 2006. "Joint production in teams," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 138-167, September.
    12. Puri, Manju & Robinson, David T., 2007. "Optimism and economic choice," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 71-99, October.
    13. Simon Gervais & Itay Goldstein, 2007. "The Positive Effects of Biased Self-Perceptions in Firms," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 11(3), pages 453-496.
    14. Luis Rayo, 2007. "Relational Incentives and Moral Hazard in Teams," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 937-963.
    15. J B Heaton, 2002. "Managerial Optimism and Corporate Finance," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 31(2), Summer.
    16. Rotemberg, Julio J, 1994. "Human Relations in the Workplace," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 684-717, August.
    17. McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1991. "Optimal Contracts for Teams," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 32(3), pages 561-577, August.
    18. Franco, April Mitchell & Mitchell, Matthew & Vereshchagina, Galina, 2011. "Incentives and the structure of teams," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2307-2332.
    19. Stoughton, Neal M, 1993. "Moral Hazard and the Portfolio Management Problem," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 2009-2028, December.
    20. Morris, Stephen, 1995. "The Common Prior Assumption in Economic Theory," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 227-253, October.
    21. Campbell, T. Colin & Gallmeyer, Michael & Johnson, Shane A. & Rutherford, Jessica & Stanley, Brooke W., 2011. "CEO optimism and forced turnover," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 695-712, September.
    22. Jeon, Seonghoon, 1996. "Moral hazard and reputational concerns in teams: Implications for organizational choice," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 297-315, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clemens Buchen & Alberto Palermo, 2022. "Adverse Selection, Heterogeneous Beliefs, and Evolutionary Learning," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 343-362, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hendrik Hakenes & Svetlana Katolnik, 2018. "Optimal Team Size and Overconfidence," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 665-687, August.
    2. Wang, Jian & Sheng, Jiliang & Yang, Jun, 2013. "Optimism bias and incentive contracts in portfolio delegation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 493-499.
    3. Wang, Jian & Wang, Xiaoting & Zhuang, Xintian & Yang, Jun, 2017. "Optimism bias, portfolio delegation, and economic welfare," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 111-113.
    4. de la Rosa, Leonidas Enrique, 2011. "Overconfidence and moral hazard," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 429-451.
    5. Otto, Clemens A., 2014. "CEO optimism and incentive compensation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 366-404.
    6. Itzhak Ben-David & John R. Graham & Campbell R. Harvey, 2007. "Managerial Overconfidence and Corporate Policies," NBER Working Papers 13711, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Franco, April Mitchell & Mitchell, Matthew & Vereshchagina, Galina, 2011. "Incentives and the structure of teams," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2307-2332.
    8. Schrand, Catherine M. & Zechman, Sarah L.C., 2012. "Executive overconfidence and the slippery slope to financial misreporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 311-329.
    9. Fosco, C. & Mengel, F., 2008. "Incentives and informal networks," Research Memorandum 022, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    10. Meagher, Kieron & Prasad, Suraj, 2016. "Career concerns and team talent," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 1-17.
    11. Felipe Caro & Charles J. Corbett & Tarkan Tan & Rob Zuidwijk, 2013. "Double Counting in Supply Chain Carbon Footprinting," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 15(4), pages 545-558, October.
    12. Hilary, Gilles & Hsu, Charles & Segal, Benjamin & Wang, Rencheng, 2016. "The bright side of managerial over-optimism," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 46-64.
    13. Ulrike Malmendier & Vincenzo Pezone & Hui Zheng, 2023. "Managerial Duties and Managerial Biases," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3174-3201, June.
    14. Michele Dell'Era & Luis Santos-Pinto, 2011. "Entrepreneurial Overconfidence, Self-Financing and Capital Market Efficiency," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 11.06, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie, revised Nov 2012.
    15. Carpenter, Jeffrey P. & Bowles, Samuel & Gintis, Herbert, 2006. "Mutual Monitoring in Teams: Theory and Experimental Evidence on the Importance of Reciprocity," IZA Discussion Papers 2106, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Brice Corgnet, 2010. "Team Formation and Self‐serving Biases," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 117-135, March.
    17. Isabelle Vialle & Luis Santos-Pinto & Jean-Louis Rullière, 2011. "Self-Confidence and Teamwork : An Experimental Test," Working Papers 1126, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    18. Christopher Dawson & David de Meza & Andrew Henley & G. Reza Arabsheibani, 2014. "Entrepreneurship: Cause and Consequence of Financial Optimism," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(4), pages 717-742, December.
    19. Bharati, Rakesh & Doellman, Thomas & Fu, Xudong, 2016. "CEO confidence and stock returns," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 89-110.
    20. SeEun Jung & Radu Vranceanu, 2017. "Gender Interaction in Teams: Experimental Evidence on Performance and Punishment Behavior," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 33, pages 95-126.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:46:y:2014:i:32:p:3980-3994. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.