A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that the productivity measures used of workers are negatively related to the difficulty and complexity of a specific sub-task.
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GLO Discussion Paper No. 739, 2020
Productivity outcomes in online labor markets and within-task complexity and difficultly – Download PDF
by Mourelatos, Evaggelos & Giannakopoulos, Nicholas & Tzagarakis, Manolis
GLO Fellow Nicholas Giannakopoulos
Author Abstract: We analyze the impact of within-task difficulty and complexity on workers’ productivity in online labor markets. Using a randomized control quasi-experiment in AMT we are able to define the difficulty and complexity embodied in requested sub-tasks within a problem-solved task. We find that our productivity measures are negatively related to the difficulty and complexity of a specific sub-task. This finding is robust to several sources of workers’ heterogeneity and to different pay schemes.
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