但我喜欢做这个！令人愉悦的任务、契约与自动化
But I Like Doing This! Enjoyable Tasks, Contracting, and Automation
NBER Working Papers · 2026 · [{"name": "Joshua S. Gans", "affiliation": []}]
中文摘要
工人有时享受生产性任务，并自愿为其投入无偿时间。我们研究 O-ring 工作，在这类工作中，企业既可以为完整任务组合定价，也可以设定有偿任务下限，同时工人仍保留自由追加时间的权利。对于两种计时合同均能支持的任何配置，工资总额是相同的：自愿追加时间并不是一种折扣。两类合同之所以不同，是因为有偿下限无法把有吸引力任务的上限设定在低于工人自愿供给的水平。这一可实施性约束在替代效应和规模效应之外，为自动化又增加了一种遏制动机。这也使薪酬衡量指标变得不完整：在给定共同的自动化任务集合与共同的人工智能技术的条件下，具有相同薪酬足迹的工作，在工作时间和任务组合上仍可能有所不同。内容丰富的薪酬制任务组合定价可以消除计时合同带来的这种扭曲。
Abstract
Workers sometimes enjoy productive tasks and voluntarily devote unpaid time to them. We study O-ring jobs in which firms can either price a complete task bundle or specify paid task floors while workers remain free to add time. For any allocation supported by both hourly contracts, the wage bill is identical: voluntary top-up is not a discount. The contracts differ because paid floors cannot cap attractive tasks below the worker's voluntary supply. This implementability constraint adds a containment motive for automation alongside replacement and scale effects. It also makes payroll measures incomplete: conditional on a common automated set and a common AI technology, jobs with the same payroll footprint can differ in worked time and task mix. Rich salaried bundle pricing removes the hourly-contract distortion.