IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cesptp/halshs-00151509.html

Free-riding and Fairness in Principal-Multi-Agent Relationships: Experimental Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Claude Meidinger

    (TEAM - Théories et Applications en Microéconomie et Macroéconomie - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Jean-Louis Rullière

    (GATE - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENS LSH - Ecole Normale Supérieure-Lettres et Sciences Humaines - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Marie Claire Villeval

    (GATE - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENS LSH - Ecole Normale Supérieure-Lettres et Sciences Humaines - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

How do intrinsic motivations such as fairness and reciprocity influence the efficiency of a principal - multi-agent relationship when joint production in a team is considered? Focusing on moral hazard in teams (Holmström, 1982), this paper reports the results of an experiment designed to determine whether principal's fairness helps in reducing free-riding amongst team members. Two treatments were run, with reshuffling (stranger treatment) and without reshuffling (partner treatment). Experimental evidence shows that i) offers of fair contracts favor team cooperation in the stranger treatment, whereas ii) repeated interactions do not necessarily improve team cooperation. All the results of the partner treatment point to the difficulty of establishing a fruitful cooperation between principals and team members unequally motivated by genuine fairness considerations.

Suggested Citation

  • Claude Meidinger & Jean-Louis Rullière & Marie Claire Villeval, 2001. "Free-riding and Fairness in Principal-Multi-Agent Relationships: Experimental Evidence," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00151509, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00151509
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00151509v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00151509v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Claude Meidinger & Jean-Louis Rullière & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2003. "Does Team-Based Compensation Give Rise to Problems When Agents Vary in Their Ability?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 6(3), pages 253-272, November.
    2. Silvia Sacchetti & Ermanno Tortia, 2012. "The internal and external governance of cooperatives: the effective membership and consistency of value," AICCON Working Papers 111-2012, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    3. Sandra Maximiano & Randolph Sloof & Joep Sonnemans, 2007. "Gift Exchange in a Multi-Worker Firm," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(522), pages 1025-1050, July.
    4. Silvia Sacchetti & Ermanno C. Tortia, 2013. "The Internal and External Governance of Cooperatives: Membership and Consistency of Values," Euricse Working Papers 1362, Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    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:hal:cesptp:halshs-00151509. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.