2025/11/07 by Ji, Yonghang, Vong, Allen
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Game Theory and Voting Systems #Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.05338
We study repeated task assignment as an instrument for providing effort incentives. Unlike traditional incentive instruments, assignment of a task both determines who produces and provides incentives, and incentives for one worker spill over to others because assignment is exclusive. We show that optimal incentives require a strict and evolving priority ranking through which workers are assigned the task. This ranking implies that workers' average workloads differ even when they are symmetric in all payoff-relevant respects. We characterize how workforce size, monitoring, and working conditions shape the scope of optimal incentive provision and the resulting inequality among workers.