Olson, Mancur. 1965 The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
An early, formal analysis of the team production problem. Among other results, argues that cooperation in enhanced by the presence of a big player, such as a major donor or a very able worker, compared to groups where all agents are roughly equal in capacity.
Jarvis, Brooke, (2017). “Who Decides Who Counts as Native American,” The New York Times Magazine, January 18.
Being designated as a tribe member can grant access to a share of tribal revenues from natural resources, casinos and other activities. Debates about who qualified for tribal status therefore illustrate a key tradeoff in determining optimal team size (from the point of view of the current members): admitting more members may raise the total amount of output produced by the tribe, but also means that this total will be divided among a larger number of claimants.
List, John A. and David Lucking-Reiley, (2002). “The Effects of Seed Money and Refunds on Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence from a University Capital Campaign,”Journal of Political Economy, 110(1):215-233.
Designs a field experiment to test two theories of fund‐raising for threshold public goods: Andreoni predicts that publicly announced “seed money” will increase charitable donations, whereas Bagnoli and Lipman predict a similar increase for a refund policy. Seed money plays the role of a big donor, or a very able team member: by bringing the team closer to its overall goal, it can raise the other members’ marginal incentives to contribute.