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Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin: The Impact of Task Juggling on Workers' Speed of Job Completion

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Author Info

  • Coviello, Decio

    () (University of Rome Tor Vergata)

  • Ichino, Andrea

    () (University of Bologna)

  • Persico, Nicola

    () (New York University)

Abstract

We show that task juggling, i.e., the spreading of effort across too many active projects, decreases the performance of workers, raising the chances of low throughput, long duration of projects and exploding backlogs. Individual speed of job completion cannot be explained only in terms of effort, ability and experience: work scheduling is a crucial "input" that cannot be omitted from the production function of individual workers. We provide a simple theoretical model to study the effects of increased task juggling on the duration of projects. Using a sample of Italian judges we show that those who are induced for exogenous reasons to work in a more parallel fashion on many trials at the same time, take longer to complete similar portfolios of cases. The exogenous variation that identifies this causal effect is constructed exploiting the lottery that assigns cases to judges together with the procedural prescription requiring judges to hold the first hearing of a case no later than 60 days from filing.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 5280.

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Length: 46 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5280

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Keywords: individual production function; work scheduling; duration of trials;

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References

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  1. Nicholas Bloom & Carol Propper & Stephan Seiler & John van Reenan, 2010. "The Impact of Competition on Management Quality: Evidence from Public Hospitals," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 10/237, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
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  7. Nick Bloom & Carol Propper & Stephan Seiler & John Van Reenen, 2010. "Management practices in the NHS," CentrePiece - The Magazine for Economic Performance 305, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
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  9. Laibson, David, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 112(2), pages 443-77, May.
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Cited by:
  1. Anzelika Zaiceva & Klaus Zimmermann, 2011. "Do ethnic minorities “stretch” their time? UK household evidence on multitasking," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 181-206, June.

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