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Referrals

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  • Luis Garicano
  • Tano Santos

Abstract

Specialization requires that workers deal with some valuable opportunities themselves and refer other, possibly unverifiable, opportunities to other workers. How do markets and organizations ensure the matching of opportunities with talent in the presence of informational asymmetries about their value? The cost of providing incentives for effort in this context is that they increase the risk of the agent appropriating an opportunity she should refer upstream. Thus spot markets are severely limited in their ability to support referrals, as they involve very powerful effort incentives on those opportunities kept by the referring agents. We show that partnerships, in which agents agree to share opportunities and the income from the opportunities, appear endogenously as a solution to this problem. Partnership contracts support better communication rules at the expense of biasing effort provision away from first best for all activities. The structure of the contract depends both on the frequency of communications and on the interaction between the relative skill of the agents and the direction of the referral flow.

Suggested Citation

  • Luis Garicano & Tano Santos, 2001. "Referrals," NBER Working Papers 8367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8367
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    Cited by:

    1. Simona Grassi & Ching-to Albert Ma, 2016. "Information acquisition, referral, and organization," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(4), pages 935-960, November.
    2. Arbatskaya, Maria & Konishi, Hideo, 2012. "Referrals in search markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 89-101.
    3. Larry G. Epstein & Hiroaki Kaido & Kyoungwon Seo, 2016. "Robust Confidence Regions for Incomplete Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1799-1838, September.
    4. Alan D. Morrison & William J. Wilhelm Jr, 2004. "Partnership Firms, Reputation, and Human Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1682-1692, December.
    5. Ghazala Azmat & Rosa Ferrer, 2017. "Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(5), pages 1306-1355.
    6. Poblete, Joaquín, 2015. "Profit sharing and market structure," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 10-18.
    7. Liu, Ting & Albert Ma, Ching-to & Mak, Henry Y., 2018. "Incentives for motivated experts in a partnership," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 296-313.
    8. Olivier Sautel, 2007. "L'évolution de la théorie des contrats incomplets face à la dé-intégration verticale," Revue d'économie industrielle, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(1), pages 5-5.
    9. Herrera, Helios & Reuben, Ernesto & Ting, Michael M., 2017. "Turf wars," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 143-153.
    10. Waibel, Christian & Wiesen, Daniel, 2016. "Kickbacks, referrals and efficiency in health care markets: Experimental evidence," HERO Online Working Paper Series 2016:8, University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme.
    11. Max Blouin & Jean-Marc Bourgeon, 2008. "Practices (revised)," Cahiers de recherche 0805, CIRPEE.
    12. Manouchehrabadi, Behrang & Letizia, Paolo & Hendrikse, George, 2021. "Governance of collective entrepreneurship," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 370-389.
    13. David Bardey & Denis Gromb & David Martimort & Jérôme Pouyet, 2020. "Controlling Sellers Who Provide Advice: Regulation and Competition," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(3), pages 409-444, September.
    14. Luis Garicano & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2006. "Organization and Inequality in a Knowledge Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1383-1435.
    15. Luis Garicano & Richard A. Posner, 2005. "Intelligence Failures: An Organizational Economics Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 151-170, Fall.
    16. James B. Rebitzer & Mark E. Votruba, 2011. "Organizational Economics and Physician Practices," NBER Working Papers 17535, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Lee, Frances (Zhiyun Xu), 2013. "Trading between agents for a better match," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 501-515.
    18. David, Guy & Kim, Kunhee Lucy, 2018. "The effect of workforce assignment on performance: Evidence from home health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 26-45.
    19. Michael T. Rauh, 2014. "Incentives, wages, employment, and the division of labor in teams," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(3), pages 533-552, September.
    20. Brigham Frandsen & James B. Rebitzer, 2014. "Structuring Incentives Within Organizations: The Case of Accountable Care Organizations," NBER Working Papers 20034, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    22. Bolton, Patrick & Freixas, Xavier & Shapiro, Joel, 2007. "Conflicts of interest, information provision, and competition in the financial services industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 297-330, August.
    23. Kolmar, Martin & Rommeswinkel, Hendrik, 2013. "Contests with group-specific public goods and complementarities in efforts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 9-22.
    24. Christopher Afendulis & Daniel Kessler, 2011. "Vertical integration and optimal reimbursement policy," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 165-179, September.
    25. Thomas N. Hubbard, 2008. "Viewpoint: Empirical research on firms' boundaries," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(2), pages 341-359, May.

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    JEL classification:

    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance

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