Why Genius Leads to Adversity: Experimental Evidence on the Reputational Effects of Task Difficulty Choices
通过实验室实验，研究有声誉顾虑的代理人如何选择任务难度，发现代理人倾向于提高难度以提升声誉，但绩效奖励可减轻低能力代理人的这种倾向。
We use a behavioral laboratory experiment to study how agents with reputation concerns select the difficulty of their tasks. Drawing upon existing theory, we subjected participants in our study to a context in which they had to convince a principal of their capability to reap financial benefits. Our results show that participants tended to increase the difficulty of their task to enhance their reputation. In addition, we provide evidence that performance rewards reduce a less capable agent's tendency to choose a more difficult task, whereas a highly capable agent's pattern of choices is unaffected by performance rewards. Although the productivity of agents in our experiment therefore decreased if they had to convince a principal of their capability, we show that these detrimental performance implications can to some degree be overcome for less capable agents through performance rewards or by ensuring that the principal can interpret the agent's choice. This paper was accepted by Christoph Loch, R&D and product development.