Task Assignments and Incentives: Generalists versus Specialists∗

I develop an agency model of job assignments where jobs differ based on the breadth of tasks. A tradeoff between task complementarities and relative abilities of workers results in those with balanced skills being assigned to multi-task jobs. The same tradeoff between complementarities and relative abilities also influences incentives to sort privately informed workers to jobs. I then draw on a variety of sources (survey data, case studies, and anecdotal evidence) to suggest that relative abilities and multi-tasking play an important role in managerial assignments of non-academic research scientists. ∗I would like to thank two anonymous referees, Jennifer Reinganum (the editor), as well as Gaetano Antinolfi, Edward Greenberg, Stephanie Lau, Glenn MacDonald, Kieron Meagher, Charles Moul, John Nachbar, Hideo Owan, Bruce Petersen, Bill Schworm, Randy Silvers and Michael Waldman for helpful comments. Thanks go to Barton Hamilton for suggesting the data set and for his helpful comments. I also thank seminar participants at the Universities of Adelaide, Deakin, Melbourne, NSW, and Sydney, and conference participants at International Industrial Organization Conference (2007), North American Summer Meetings of the Econometric Society (2007), and European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (2008). I am also grateful for financial support from the Australian School of Business. Finally, thanks go to Maurya Green, Nirmala Kannankutty, Adrian McQueen and Florin Petrescu for their help with the SDR data set. The use of NSF data does not imply NSF endorsement of the research methods or conclusions contained in the article. All errors are my own. †School of Economics, University of New South Wales. [email protected]