Splitting leagues or tournaments seems to be puzzling when agents are homogeneous and splitting leads to a negative competition effect. However, it can be shown that the principal can nevertheless benefit from splitting. First, splitting can be used as a divide-and-rule strategy by the principal...

We analyze the optimal choice of risk in a two-stage tournament game  between two players that have different concave utility functions. At the first stage, both players simultaneously choose risk. At the second stage, both observe overall risk and simultaneously decide on effort or investment....

In practice, two types of tournaments can be distinguished - U-type and J-type tournaments. In U-type tournaments, workers receive prizes that have been fixed in advance. In J-type tournaments, the employer fixes an aggregate wage bill in advance, which is then shared among the workers according...