Productivity Spillovers in Team Production: Evidence from Professional Basketball

Abstract

Workers contribute to team production through their own productivity and through their effect on the productivity of other team members. We develop and estimate a model where workers are heterogeneous both in their own productivity and in their ability to facilitate the productivity of others. We use data from professional basketball to measure the importance of peers in productivity because we have clear measures of output, and members of a worker's group change on a regular basis. Our empirical results highlight that productivity spillovers play an important role in team production, and accounting for them leads to changes in the overall assessment of a worker's contribution. We also use the parameters from our model to show that the match between workers and teams is important and quantify the gains to specific trades of workers to alternative teams. Finally, we find that worker compensation is largely determined by own productivity with little weight given to the productivity spillovers a worker creates, despite their importance to team production. The use of our empirical model in other settings could lead to improved matching between workers and teams within a firm, and compensation that is more in-line with the overall contribution that workers make to team production.

Effort reduction of employer‐to‐employer changers: Empirical evidence from football

“…Statistics of the team and teammates are incorporated as a fourth set of covariates. Because the outcome of football is a team production function, teammates influence each other's performance (Arcidiacono, Kinsler, & Price, ; Georganas, Tonin, & Vlassopoulos, ; Idson & Kahane, ). To control for performance and their teammates' effort, information on the team's (minus the player of observation) average running distance, average age, average height, average tenure, days of rest, and minutes played (to control for sent offs) are included.…”

Uncovering the sources of team synergy: Player complementarities in the production of wins

“…For instance, Gould and Winter (2009) find that the performance of batters increases with that of other batters on a team. Arcidiacono et al (2017) suggest that this may be the case because pitchers tend to throw fewer balls to avoid a walk based on the hitting ability of subsequent batters. On the defensive side of the ball, Willis (2017) provides the example of a strong field-1 For example, as good as Tom Brady was for the 2017 Super Bowl winning Patriots, arguably the defining play in that year's Super Bowl came while he was not even on the field, and instead when the only quarterback with a higher rating that year was.…”

Production spillovers: Are they valued?

“…A previous study by the author (together with Peter Arcidiacono and Josh Kinsler) contains a large number of background references for the material presented here, and has been used intensively in all major parts of this article [1]. The author would like to thank Michael Gmeiner for excellent research assistance on the original study and Will Cockriel and Jacob Van Leeuwen for excellent research assistance for this article.…”

“…While many of the insights in this article are drawn from research using data from professional basketball [1], the main findings regarding productivity spillovers are also relevant for other labor markets and firms. The increasing complexity of most production processes requires that even more workers engage in team production.…”

“…One of the skills that may be important to a variety of production processes is the ability to bring out the best in others. In a recent study, data from the National Basketball Association (NBA) were used to identify three measures for each player: (i) their ability to score; (ii) their ability to defend; and (iii) their ability to help others score [1]. All three factors are important components of overall team productivity and probability of success.…”