Two essays on social networks in organizations

时间：12月8日（周四）10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

地点：ZOOM会议（发送邮件至hyyang@nsd.pku.edu.cn获取线上会议信息）

主讲人：Xiangyu Shi (Economics PhD candidate, Yale Univerisity)

主持老师：吴泽南，石凡奇（经院）；胡岠（国发院）

参与老师：胡涛，吴泽南，石凡奇（经院）；汪浩，胡岠（国发院）；翁翕（光华）

摘要：

Essay 1 title: Relative performance evaluation in organizations with information networks

Essay 1 abstract: In this paper, I study a principal-multiagent model where the principal adopts the relative performance evaluation (RPE) as the compensation strategy, and where agents are connected in an information network. The ability of each agent is private information, but adjacent agents in the information network can observe each other's ability. Given RPE as the compensation scheme, and assuming that each agent is identical, the effect of adding links among agents on the effort level is ambiguous, and determined by the second- (complementarity) and third-order ("risk" attitude) cross-partial derivatives of the reward function. Complete information networks may not be optimal for maximizing the performance of the organization. On the contrary, empty networks can be optimal in some cases.

Essay 2 title: Helping Behavior in Networked Organizations

Essay 2 abstract: This article studies a networked organization in which agents work to directly increase the team's output and help neighbors to reduce the disutility of working. I establish the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium of a two-stage game in which agents first decide how much helping effort to give to each neighbor, and, then, how much effort to expend to directly benefit the team. I show that dense networks might not necessarily sustain a higher level of help, because links might be redundant. If the agents are homogeneous, the network in which they are pairwise connected is the most efficient.

主讲人介绍：Xiangyu Shi is an economics PhD candidate at Yale Univerisity. His research interests are social and economic networks and firm dynamics. His papers have been published at Journal of Development Economics, and many of his papers are currently under review at leading economic journals. He serves as the referee for AER: Insights, JLEO, CER, and among others.