Non-additivity and the Salience of Marginal Productivities: Experimental Evidence on Distributive Fairness

We investigate the relevance of different distributive fairness norms in a team production process in which the team members’ contributions to the joint output are not necessarily additive. In some of the cases of non-additivity, the individual marginal contributions to the output are not salient. We vary the salience and investigate how third parties allocate the joint output to the team members. We find that the prevalent norm is to hold others responsible only for their inputs rather than for the incremental increase in the output. The marginal productivities are taken into account only when they are made readily apparent.