Returns to Teamwork and Professional Networks: Evidence from Economic Research

Abstract

Teamwork is growing in developed economies, and workers in teams are increasingly compensated according to team output. Because parsing individual contributions to teamwork is difficult, I focus on scholarly economics research, which lists contributing authors. I use turnover to identify team value-added: an author's average output quality conditional on the value-added of coauthors. Linking the universe of scholarly economic research output to publicly available payroll records, I study the effect of value-added on salaries. Strikingly, coauthors' value-added has a greater effect on salaries than does own value-added, suggesting the value of professional networks dominates the effect of discounting contributions based on coauthor quality. Moreover, authors are compensated for the solo-authored output of their coauthors - which can not be reasonably attributed to them - demonstrating the value of professional networks.