provides an empirical analysis on how individuals’ relative income position affects their performance. Using a unique data set … average and this difference increases, his performance worsens and the productivity decreasing effects of positional concerns …

raise or lower their performance? Behavioral evidence on these important questions is rare. This paper takes a novel … positional concerns and envy reduce individual performance. In contrast, there does not seem to be any tolerance for income …

performance in a real competitive environment with real tasks and real incentives. …