Papers

Remote Work and Team Productivity

with E. Glenn Dutcher (Ohio University)
Working Paper

Abstract

Remote work policies remain controversial mainly because of productivity concerns. The existing literature highlights how the remote setting affects individual productivity yet little is known about how the remote setting affects work in teams - where productivity losses are potentially higher given the additional role of beliefs over partner productivity. Our study closes this gap by examining the effort of individuals randomly assigned to work in either a remote or office setting with partners who are remote and office based. We find that remote workers contribute more effort to the team than office workers, with no differences based on the location of their partners. Office workers incorrectly believe their remote teammates' contributions will be lower and respond by contributing less effort to the team when paired with remote partners versus office partners. Hence, productivity issues in remote teams are driven by the biased beliefs of office workers rather than true productivity differences, which suggests that managerial policies should focus on correcting these incorrect beliefs rather than limiting remote work.

The Value of Consensus: An Experimental Analysis of Costly Deliberation

with Marcello Puca (University of Bergamo), Simone Sepe (University of Arizona)
Working Paper

Abstract

Combining theory and experiments, we examine decision-making with endogenous deliberation across different voting rules: consensus and veto unanimity, and simple majority. Before voting, asymmetrically informed agents choose whether to engage in potentially costly communication to aggregate their private information. In line with existing studies, we find that free communication minimizes differences in decision-making across rules. In contrast, with costly communication, differences in decision-making re-emerge as the voting rules affect communication and private information aggregation. Consensus unanimity frequently outperforms the other rules because it induces more communication among agents. This work provides a new rationale for the legitimacy of the commonly used consensus unanimity voting rule in jury trials.