The Department of Economics cordially invites you to the Economics Research Seminar (Department Seminar) on Wednesday, November 23^rd, with

Alessandra Allocca (University of Munich) on "No Man is an Island: An Empirical Study on Team Formation and Performance"

Abstract: In many organizations, employees select their projects and teams. Is such a decentralized setting efficient? To answer this question, one needs to understand (i) what drives team formation and (ii) how selection impacts teams' performance. For this purpose, I develop a structural entry model with strategic interactions where heterogeneous agents decide whether to join a project. The decision depends on who else may potentially join, the project quality, and other individual and project characteristics. In turn, this decision affects the probability of project completion. I estimate the model using a novel dataset from Virgo, a Nobel-prize-winning scientific collaboration. I find that (i) selection heavily depends on the pool of teammates whereas projects' quality is of lesser importance, and (ii) heterogeneity in agents' characteristics needs to be accounted for to obtain unbiased estimates of teams' performance. With a counterfactual experiment, I show that moving from a decentralized to a centralized world leads to fewer completed projects. The findings inform policy-makers about teams' organization and performance.

Date: Wednesday, November 23^rd

Time: 4.30 to 6.00 pm (CET)

Location: building D4, ground floor, room D4.0.133