We study self-organized teams in dynamic contests. Using data from Kaggle, we document that teams outperform solo players, but few players choose to form teams. Every new team alters the composition of players, discouraging less productive solo players to make submissions. We estimate the structural parameters of a dynamic contest model, including the team formation and submission costs. We find that team formation incentives diminish with the number of teams, as do the incentives to make submissions. We empirically evaluate the productivity-discouragement tradeoff caused by teamwork and discuss implications for contest design, including facilitating teamwork and hosting open competitions.

We study the impact of vertical integration on pricing incentives in multiproduct industries. To do so, we exploit recent variation in vertical structure in the US carbonated-beverage industry. While the elimination of double marginalization with vertical integration is normally characterized as procompetitive, economic theory predicts that it may cause anticompetitive price increases in multiproduct industries. We indeed find that vertical integration causes price decreases in products with eliminated double margins but price increases in the other products sold by the integrated firm. These results provide new evidence of anticompetitive effects of vertical mergers.

Online contests have become a prominent form of innovation procurement. Contest platforms often display a real-time public leaderboard to provide performance feedback. The impact of information disclosure on players’ decisions is theoretically ambiguous: some players may get discouraged and quit, while others may decide to keep working to remain competitive. We investigate the impact of a leaderboard on contest outcomes using two complementary approaches. First, we estimate a dynamic model using observational data and compare the equilibria with and without a leaderboard. Second, we present experimental evidence from student competitions. We find that a leaderboard on average improves competition outcomes.