该篇文章非常经典，用数据证实了社会网络（友谊）的存在对个人的影响，结论很简单：和比你强的朋友在一起工作会提高你的生产力。
本文方法非常经典，推荐细读！看一遍有一遍的收获！

Social Incentives in the Workplace
Oriana Bandiera
London School of Economics
and IZA
Iwan Barankay
University of Pennsylvania
and IZA
Imran Rasul
University College London
and IZA
Discussion Paper No. 4190
May 2009

ABSTRACT
Social Incentives in the Workplace*
We present evidence on social incentives in the workplace, namely on whether workers’
behavior is affected by the presence of those they are socially tied to, even in settings where
there are no externalities among workers due to either the production technology or the
compensation scheme in place. To do so we combine data on individual worker productivity
from a firm’s personnel records with information on each worker’s social network of friends in
the firm. We find that compared to when she has no social ties with her co-workers, a given
worker’s productivity is significantly higher when she works alongside friends who are more
able than her, and significantly lower when she works with friends who are less able than her.
As workers are paid piece rates based on individual productivity, social incentives can be
quantified in monetary terms and are such that (i) workers who are more able than their
friends are willing to exert less effort and forgo 10% of their earnings; (ii) workers who have at
least one friend who is more able than themselves are willing to increase their effort and
hence productivity by 10%. The distribution of worker ability is such that the net effect of
social incentives on the firm’s aggregate performance is positive. The results suggest that
firms can exploit social incentives as an alternative to monetary incentives to motivate
workers.
JEL Classification: L2, M5
Keywords: conformism, social incentives, social networks
Corresponding author: