Inferring the True Likelihood of Task Completion by Others

Abstract

Both in online labor markets and within enterprises, a worker often has better information than his employer about the likelihood of completing a task or project on time. This information asymmetry prevents managers from having accurate estimates of project completion times. We design and experimentally test an incentive mechanism which induces workers to reveal their true likelihoods of completion times while minimizing the expected payments by the employers. Our results show that our mechanism performs very well at the aggregate level.