Learning Unethical Practices from a Co-Worker: The Peer Effect of Jose Canseco
32 Pages Posted: 5 Jun 2008
There are 3 versions of this paper
Learning Unethical Practices from a Co-Worker: The Peer Effect of Jose Canseco
Learning Unethical Practices from a Co-Worker: The Peer Effect of Jose Canseco
Date Written: November 2007
Abstract
This paper examines the issue of whether workers learn productive skills from their co-workers, even if those skills are unethical. Specifically, we estimate whether Jose Canseco, one of the best baseball players in last few decades, affected the performance of his teammates. In his autobiography, Canseco claims that he improved the productivity of his teammates by introducing them to steroids. Using panel data on baseball players, we show that a player's performance increases significantly after they played with Jose Canseco. After checking 30 comparable players from the same era, we find that no other baseball player produced a similar effect. Clearly, Jose Canseco had an unusual influence on the productivity of his peers. These results are consistent with Canseco's controversial claims, and suggest that workers not only learn productive skills from their co-workers, but sometimes those skills may derive from unethical practices. These findings may be relevant to many workplaces where competitive pressures create incentives to adopt unethical means to boost productivity and profits.
Keywords: corruption, crime, peer effects
JEL Classification: J24
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Peer Effects with Random Assignment: Results for Dartmouth Roommates
-
Peer Effects with Random Assignment: Results for Dartmouth Roommates
-
The Company You Keep: The Effects of Family and Neighborhood on Disadvantaged Youths
By Anne Case and Lawrence F. Katz
-
Network Effects and Welfare Cultures
By Marianne Bertrand, Erzo F. P. Luttmer, ...
-
The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto
By David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, ...