I theoretically propose and experimentally test a novel behavioral channel, robot-babysitting, that can impose switching and learning costs on workers when automation is complementary. My theoretical model shows that one can identify these costs by …
I study the effect of task difficulty on workers’ effort. I find that task difficulty has an inverse-U effect on effort and that this effect is quantitatively large, especially when compared to the effect of conditional monetary rewards. Difficulty …
I show how using response times as a proxy for effort can address a long-standing issue of how to separate the effect of cognitive ability on performance from the effect of motivation. My method is based on a dynamic stochastic model of optimal …