Partnership, reciprocity and team design

This paper studies the effect of intention-based reciprocity preferences on the free-riding problem arising in partnerships. Our results suggest a tendency of efficient partnerships to consist of members whose sensitivity to reciprocity is – individually or jointly – sufficiently high. Sufficient conditions for the implementation of the efficient strategy profile require a reciprocity-based sharing rule so that each partner gets a fraction of the output, which is a percentage of his own sensitivity to reciprocity with respect to the overall sensitivity in the team. Finally, we introduce the concept of psychological strong Nash equilibrium and show that it allows for the unique and collusion-proof implementation of the efficient strategy profile.

► Effect of intention-based reciprocity preferences on partnerships. ► Efficient partnerships: members whose sensitivity to reciprocity is sufficiently high. ► Efficient sharing rule: partners get a fraction that is a percentage of his reciprocity with respect to reciprocity in the team. ► Unique and collusion-proof implementation of the efficient strategy profile.