This paper investigates the effects of managerial incentives on favoritism in promotion decisions. First, we theoretically show that favoritism leads to a lower quality of promotion decisions and in turn lower efforts. But the effect can be mitigated by pay-for-performance incentives for...

Using German establishment data, we show that the relationship between intensity of performance pay and intensity of applicant screening depends on the nature of production. In establishments with increased multitasking, performance pay is positively associated with applicant screening. By...

This paper studies the influence of information on entry choices in a competition with a controlled laboratory experiment. We investigate whether information provision attracts mainly high productivity individuals and reduces competition failure, where competition failure occurs when a subject...

Although relative performance schemes are pervasive in organizations reliable empirical data on induced sabotage behavior is almost non-existent. We study sabotage in tournaments in a controlled laboratory experiment and are able to confirm one of the key insights from theory: effort and...

Tournaments are widely used to assign bonuses and determine promotions because of the link between relative performance and rewards. However, performing relatively well (poorly) may also yield psychological benefits (pain). This may also stimulate effort. Through a real-effort artefactual field...

The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition, which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the...

We run a field experiment to investigate whether competing in rank-order tournaments with different prize spreads affects individual performance. Our experiment involved students from an Italian University who took an intermediate exam in which one part was awarded on the basis of their relative...