Peers and Motivation at Work

Abstract

This paper studies workplace peer effects by randomly varying work assignments at a tea estate in Malawi. We find that increasing mean peer ability by 10 percent raises productivity by 0.3 percent. This effect is driven by the responses of women. Neither production nor compensation externalities cause the effect because workers receive piece rates and do not work in teams. Additional analyses provide no support for learning or socialization as mechanisms. Instead, peer effects appear to operate through "motivation": given the choice to be reassigned, most workers prefer working near high-ability co-workers because these peers motivate them to work harder.

Birds of a Feather Earn Together. Gender and Peer Effects at the Workplace

“…We adopt Cornelissen et al (2017) estimation approach to assess peer effects in Brazil, and we further allow same-gender and opposite-gender peers to exert different influences on workers' productivity. Many prior studies of peer effects are based on laboratory experiments 4 or on real-world data from specific occupations such as cashiers (Mas and Moretti, 2009), farm workers (Bandiera et al, 2005(Bandiera et al, , 2010Brune et al, 2022), call center workers (Lindquist et al, 2015), or sportsmen (Guryan et al, 2009). None of these studies, however, distinguish between within-gender and cross-gender peer effects.…”