IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v120y2013i2p188-191.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When higher prizes lead to lower efforts—The impact of favoritism in tournaments

Author

Listed:
  • Herbertz, Claus
  • Sliwka, Dirk

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between tournament prices and effort choices in the presence of favoritism. High tournament prizes can decrease agents’ effort supply when the choice of the winner is not perfectly objective but affected to some extent by personal preferences of an evaluator.

Suggested Citation

  • Herbertz, Claus & Sliwka, Dirk, 2013. "When higher prizes lead to lower efforts—The impact of favoritism in tournaments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 188-191.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:120:y:2013:i:2:p:188-191
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2013.03.015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176513001249
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2013.03.015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Margaret A. Meyer, 1992. "Biased Contests and Moral Hazard: Implications for Career Profiles," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 25-26, pages 165-187.
    3. Hoffler, Felix & Sliwka, Dirk, 2003. "Do new brooms sweep clean? When and why dismissing a manager increases the subordinates' performance," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(5), pages 877-890, October.
    4. James A. Fairburn & James M. Malcomson, 2001. "Performance, Promotion, and the Peter Principle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(1), pages 45-66.
    5. Suman Ghosh & Michael Waldman, 2010. "Standard promotion practices versus up‐or‐out contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(2), pages 301-325, June.
    6. Michael Waldman, 1984. "Job Assignments, Signalling, and Efficiency," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 255-267, Summer.
    7. Bhattacharya, Sudipto & Guasch, J Luis, 1988. "Heterogeneity, Tournaments, and Hierarchies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 867-881, August.
    8. Prendergast, Canice & Topel, Robert H, 1996. "Favoritism in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 958-978, October.
    9. Berger, Johannes & Herbertz, Claus & Sliwka, Dirk, 2011. "Incentives and Cooperation in Firms: Field Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 5618, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. repec:adr:anecst:y:1992:i:25-26:p:08 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Jan Zábojník & Dan Bernhardt, 2001. "Corporate Tournaments, Human Capital Acquisition, and the Firm Size—Wage Relation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(3), pages 693-716.
    12. O'Keeffe, Mary & Viscusi, W Kip & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1984. "Economic Contests: Comparative Reward Schemes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 27-56, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Babington & Sebastian J. Goerg & Carl Kitchens, 2020. "Do Tournaments With Superstars Encourage or Discourage Competition?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(1), pages 44-63, January.
    2. Lorens A. Imhof & Matthias Kräkel, 2023. "Team Diversity and Incentives," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 2497-2516, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jin, Xin, 2014. "The Signaling Role of Note Being Promoted: Theory and Evidence," MPRA Paper 58484, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Waldman, Michael, 2013. "Classic promotion tournaments versus market-based tournaments," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 198-210.
    3. DeVaro, Jed, 2011. "Using "opposing responses" and relative performance to distinguish empirically among alternative models of promotions," MPRA Paper 35175, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Jed DeVaro & Antti Kauhanen, 2016. "An “Opposing Responses” Test of Classic versus Market-Based Promotion Tournaments," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(3), pages 747-779.
    5. Jed DeVaro & Michael Waldman, 2012. "The Signaling Role of Promotions: Further Theory and Empirical Evidence," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 91-147.
    6. Bastani, Spencer & Giebe, Thomas & Gürtler, Oliver, 2019. "A general framework for studying contests," MPRA Paper 97363, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Xin Jin, 2014. "The Signaling Role of Not Being Promoted: Theory and Evidence," Working Papers 0314, University of South Florida, Department of Economics.
    8. Steffen Altmann & Armin Falk & Matthias Wibral, 2012. "Promotions and Incentives: The Case of Multistage Elimination Tournaments," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 149-174.
    9. Jeanine Miklós-Thal & Hannes Ullrich, 2016. "Career Prospects and Effort Incentives: Evidence from Professional Soccer," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1645-1667, June.
    10. Ján Zábojník, 2012. "Promotion tournaments in market equilibrium," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(1), pages 213-240, September.
    11. Jan Zabojnik, 2008. "Promotion Tournaments In Market Equilibrium," Working Paper 1193, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    12. Bastani, Spencer & Giebe, Thomas & Gürtler, Oliver, 2022. "Simple equilibria in general contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 264-280.
    13. Dato, Simon & Grunewald, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias & Müller, Daniel, 2016. "Asymmetric employer information, promotions, and the wage policy of firms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 273-300.
    14. Drugov, Mikhail & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2017. "Biased contests for symmetric players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 116-144.
    15. Kräkel, Matthias, 2004. "Emotions and Incentives," IZA Discussion Papers 1270, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Marc Gürtler & Oliver Gürtler, 2019. "Promotion signaling, discrimination, and positive discrimination policies," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 50(4), pages 1004-1027, December.
    18. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    19. Lorens Imhof & Matthias Kräkel, 2016. "Ex post unbalanced tournaments," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(1), pages 73-98, February.
    20. Gürtler, Oliver & Kräkel, Matthias, 2010. "Optimal tournament contracts for heterogeneous workers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 180-191, August.
    21. Alan Benson & Danielle Li & Kelly Shue, 2019. "Promotions and the Peter Principle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(4), pages 2085-2134.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incentives; Favoritism; Nepotism; Tournaments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:120:y:2013:i:2:p:188-191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.