A massive stone wall project that should have taken 30 days was finished in just three days using a tournament-based reward system.
April 29, 2026
Original Paper
Incentive Monopoly Pricing and the Limits of Labor Supply A Theoretical Reconstruction Based on the Case of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Wall Repair
SSRN · 6657839
The Takeaway
Human labor supply is limited by biological ceilings and competitive intensity rather than just the size of a paycheck. Neoclassical economics assumes that if you want more work, you simply have to offer more money. Toyotomi Hideyoshi proved that creating an incentive monopoly can force productivity to reach the absolute physiological limits of the human body. This system bypassed the usual market trade-offs by turning the work into a high-stakes competition for status and survival. It suggests that modern management could theoretically generate ten times the current output if they abandoned standard wage logic.
From the abstract
Neoclassical labor economics has long been anchored in the assumption of competitive markets, where wages are determined by supply and demand, firms are wage takers, and employment stops when the value of the marginal product equals the market wage. Labor supply is thus locked into a market equilibrium logic. This paper breaks with that core premise. It constructs an incentive-monopoly model of labor supply in which the employer abandons the passive role of wage taker and instead becomes a price