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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Incentives and motivation in dynamic contests
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Arnd Heinrich Klein
  • Armin Schmutzler
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Publisher Elsevier
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 0167-2681
Volume 189
Page Range 194 - 216
Date 2021
Abstract Text This paper uses a contest setting to analyze the provision of intertemporal incentives in organizations. Should a principal repeatedly award small prizes or give a large prize that takes past performance into account? A simple theoretical model predicts higher efforts in the latter case. An experiment confirms this prediction, but the size of the effect is smaller than expected. This result reflects two observations of independent interest. First, there is a revenge effect for laggards in repeated contests: Laggards exert higher efforts than leaders with the same first-period effort level. Second, there is an intimidation effect for laggards in the single-prize case: Laggards exert lower efforts than leaders with the same first-period effort level. Moreover, we observe polarization in laggard behavior.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.06.023
Other Identification Number merlin-id:21483
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Keywords Dynamic contests, rank-order tournaments, incentive systems, intimidation effect, revenge effect, experiments