Sebastian J. Goerg What Kind of Reward Scheme Works Best to Induce High Effort in Teams?

Sebastian J. Goerg is Assistant Professor in Economics at Florida State University. Between 2009 and 2012, Goerg was Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, in Bonn (Germany). In his research Goerg focuses on the economics of rewards, incentives and (legal) institutions, and how they affect human behaviour. In the field of production effort, Goerg sees a potential in unequal reward systems.

Area of Research

Behavioral Economics, Experimental Economics, Organizational Economics

Sebastian J. Goerg and Sebastian Kube. "Goals (Th)at Work – Goals, Monetary Incentives, and Workers’ Performance." MPI Collective Goods Preprint (2012).  
Ilan Fischer, Alex Frid, Sebastian J. Goerg, Simon A. Levin, Daniel I. Rubenstein and Reinhard Selten. "Fusing Enacted and Expected Mimicry Generates a Winning Strategy That Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (2013): 10229-10233.  
Thorsten Chmura, Sebastian J. Goerg and Reinhard Selten. "Learning in Repeated 2x2 Games." Games and Economic Behavior 76 (2012): 44-73.  
Sebastian J. Goerg, Sebastian Kube and Ro’i Zultan. "Treating Equals Unequally -Incentives, Motivation and Production Technology in Teams." Journal of Labor Economics 28 (2010): 747-772.  
Sebastian J. Goerg and Gari Walkowitz. "On the Prevalence of Framing Effects Across Subject-Pools in a Two-Person Cooperation Game." Journal of Economic Psychology 31 (2010): 849-859.  

since 2012

Assistant Professor of Economics

Florida State University

Department of Economics

since 2012

Research Affiliate

Florida State University

Experimental Social Science Cluster

since 2012

Research Affiliate

Max Planck Society

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

2011-2012

Visiting Research Scholar

University of Michigan

School of Information

2009-2012

Senior Research Fellow

Max Planck Society

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

2007-2008

Visiting Researcher

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Antai College of Economics & Management

2005-2009

Research Assistant

University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

BonnEconLab, Laboratory for Experimental Economics

2010

PhD in Economics

University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

2005

Diploma in Economics

University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

- Conflict Management and Peace Science

- Die Betriebswirtschaft

- Economic Inquiry

- European Economic Review

- Experimental Economics

- Games

- Games and Economic Behavior

- Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

- Journal of Economic Psychology

- Journal of Economics and Statistics

- Journal of Public Economics

- Journal of Socio-Economics

- Labour Economics

- Management Science

- National Science Foundation

- The British Academy

- The Review of Economic Studies

- American Economic Association

- Economic Science Association

- Gesellschaft fur Experimentelle Wirtschaftsforschung

- Southern Economic Association

- Verein für Sozialpolitik

Prizes

- Gesellschaft für Experimentelle Wirtschaftsforschung, Heinz Sauermann Award for the Best Dissertation in Experimental Economics

The experiment presented in this video explores the interaction of reward schemes and production functions on team effort. SEBASTIAN J. GOERG explains that unequal rewards seem to yield higher efficiency for complementary production functions (i.e., if each worker’s effort counts); but that symmetric reward schemes induce higher efforts if workers’ efforts are substitutes. He concludes that inequality may have a positive effect on efficiency and that both production function and reward scheme are potent tools to raise average effort.

LT Video Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10096

Treating Equals Unequally: Incentives in Teams, Workers’ Motivation, and Production Technology

  • Sebastian J. Goerg, Sebastian Kube and Ro’i Zultan
  • Journal of Labor Economics
  • Published in 2010
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Sebastian J. Goerg, Sebastian Kube and Ro’i Zultan. "Treating Equals Unequally: Incentives in Teams, Workers’ Motivation, and Production Technology." Journal of Labor Economics 28 (2010): 747–772.