How Many Winners Are Good to Have? On Tournaments with Sabotage

Christine Harbring () and Bernd Irlenbusch ()
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Christine Harbring: RWTH Aachen University
Bernd Irlenbusch: University of Cologne

No 1777, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: From an employer's perspective a tournament should induce agents to exert productive activities but refrain from destructive ones. We experimentally test the predictive power of a tournament model which suggests that – within a reasonable framework – productive and destructive activities are not influenced neither by the number of agents taking part in the tournament nor by the fraction of the winner prizes. Our results clearly confirm that sabotage in tournaments indeed occurs. While tournament size has virtually no effect on behavior, a balanced fraction of winner and loser prizes seems to particularly enhance productive activities.

Keywords: experiments; personnel economics; relative performance evaluation; sabotage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D23 J33 L23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2005-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2008, 65 (3), 682-702

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