IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mal/wpaper/2010-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Selectivity in Hierarchical Social Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Jose A. Garcia-Martinez

    (Departamento de Estudios Económicos y Financieros. Universidad Miguel Hernández)

Abstract

We consider a selection process and a hierarchical institution in a dynamic model as in Harrington [3], where agents are "climbing the pyramid" in a rank-order contest based on the "up or out" policy. Agents are ranked according to the quality of their performances in a particular environment that they face in groups, and a fraction of the highest ranked agents are promoted. The size of this fraction characterizes the selectivity of the process, and we distinguish between local and global selectivity. We study the role of the degree of local and global selectivity in the dynamic process where agents' types differ in their expected performances. Surprisingly, we find that an increase in the selectivity of the process can be detrimental to the agents with the highest expected performances. In fact, it does not matter how small the expected performance of a particular type of agent is. If the degree of selectivity is high enough, that type of agent will survive. However, if the selectivity decreases, the only survivor is the agent with the highest expected performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Jose A. Garcia-Martinez, 2010. "The Role of Selectivity in Hierarchical Social Systems," Working Papers 2010-05, Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:mal:wpaper:2010-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://theeconomics.uma.es/malagawpseries/Papers/METCwp2010-5.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2010
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Harrington, Joseph Jr., 1999. "The Equilibrium Level of Rigidity in a Hierarchy," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 189-202, August.
    3. Alos-Ferrer, Carlos, 1999. "Dynamical Systems with a Continuum of Randomly Matched Agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 245-267, June.
    4. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-715, September.
    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. José A. García-Martínez, 2018. "A simple dynamic contest with a parameterized strength of competition," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 305-332, August.
    2. Jiabin Wu, 2017. "Social Hierarchy and the Evolution of Behavior," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(04), pages 1-16, December.

    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. Garcia-Martinez, Jose A., 2010. "Selectivity in hierarchical social systems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(6), pages 2471-2482, November.
    2. José A. García-Martínez, 2018. "A simple dynamic contest with a parameterized strength of competition," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 305-332, August.
    3. Garcia-Martinez, Jose A., 2012. "An Unexpected Role of Local Selectivity in Social Promotion," MPRA Paper 36324, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Anja Schöttner & Veikko Thiele, 2010. "Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 699-731, September.
    5. Ahrens, Jan-Philipp & Landmann, Andreas & Woywode, Michael, 2015. "Gender preferences in the CEO successions of family firms: Family characteristics and human capital of the successor," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 86-103.
    6. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    7. Gil S Epstein, 2012. "Employer’s information and promotion-seeking activities," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 1(4), pages 21-32.
    8. repec:cgr:cgsser:03-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Pradeep Dubey & Siddhartha Sahi, 2016. "Optimal Prizes," Department of Economics Working Papers 16-03, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.
    10. Colak, Gonul & Gounopoulos, Dimitrios & Loukopoulos, Panagiotis & Loukopoulos, Georgios, 2021. "Tournament incentives and IPO failure risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    11. Delfgaauw, Josse & Dur, Robert & Non, Arjan & Verbeke, Willem, 2014. "Dynamic incentive effects of relative performance pay: A field experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 1-13.
    12. Alex Krumer & Reut Megidish & Aner Sela, 2017. "Round‐Robin Tournaments with a Dominant Player," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 119(4), pages 1167-1200, October.
    13. Dubey, Pradeep & Wu, Chien-wei, 2001. "Competitive prizes: when less scrutiny induces more effort," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 311-336, December.
    14. Loukas Balafoutas & E. Glenn Dutcher & Florian Lindner & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2017. "The Optimal Allocation Of Prizes In Tournaments Of Heterogeneous Agents," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 461-478, January.
    15. Markus LANG & Alexander RATHKE & Marco RUNKEL, 2010. "The Economic Consequences Of Foreigner Rules In National Sports Leagues," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 31, pages 47-64.
    16. Alexander Matros, 2006. "Elimination Tournaments where Players Have Fixed Resources," Working Paper 205, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2006.
    17. Thierry Lallemand & Robert Plasman & François Rycx, 2008. "Women and Competition in Elimination Tournaments," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(1), pages 3-19, February.
    18. Phyllis A. Siegel & Donald C. Hambrick, 2005. "Pay Disparities Within Top Management Groups: Evidence of Harmful Effects on Performance of High-Technology Firms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(3), pages 259-274, June.
    19. repec:zbw:rwirep:0079 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. C. Sofia Machado & Miguel Portela, 2011. "Age and opportunities for promotion," NIPE Working Papers 03/2011, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    21. Tünde Paál & Tamás Bereczkei, 2015. "Punishment as a Means of Competition: Implications for Strong Reciprocity Theory," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    22. Catherine Haeck & Frank Verboven, 2012. "The Internal Economics of a University: Evidence from Personnel Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(3), pages 591-626.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social hierarchy; Selection; Selectivity; Promotion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D00 - Microeconomics - - General - - - General
    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    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:mal:wpaper:2010-5. 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: Ascension Andina (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dtmales.html .

    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.