团队

19世纪末，经济学家维尔弗雷多·帕累托（Vilfredo Pareto）观察到意大利80%的财富集中在20%的人手中。这一现象后来被美国管理学者约瑟夫·朱兰（Joseph Juran）进一步发展，推论出著名的“80/20法则”：80%的结果（输出）往往归于20%的投入（输入）。

Becker and Murphy proposed that task specialization raises productivity but is limited by the costs of coordinating workers. We propose that automation enables workers to specialize without coordination costs. To the extent that the cost of effort exhibits increasing differences, workers increase effort in nonautomated tasks and productivity. The proposition is supported by a field experiment among supermarket cashiers. Conventionally, supermarket cashiers perform two tasks: scanning purchases and collecting payment. Cashiers exhibited increasing differences in the cost of effort: when they scanned faster, they took longer to collect payments. We rotated cashiers between the conventional job design and one in which they specialized in scanning. The new job design increased cashier productivity in scanning by more than 10%. The faster scanning was not due to customer sorting or cashier learning. The proposition is also validated by a survey of taxi drivers. Drivers who reported that difficulties in finding their way affected their driving were more likely to use map apps.

本文结合新加坡最大的公立大学的学生记录与收入调查数据，估算拥有学士学位的毕业生若多接受一年高等本科教育的回报。部份学院第四（荣誉）年的资格取决于第三年末成绩是否达标，我们通过断点回归设计对此进行研究。相对于成绩差一点就达标的学生，第三年末平均成绩略高于门槛的学生明显更有可能完成第四年课程，并且于毕业后有更高的收入。额外一年的本科教育为学生在毕业六个月后带来的收入回报率约为 12%。结合税收数据亦显示学生在毕业后至少四年仍受惠于此持续回报。此外，即使大学降低门槛以鼓励更多学生完成第四年本科教育，额外一年高等教育带来的收入回报仍然可观，证明此现象并不完全源于教育的信号机制。