collect data from a field experiment where incentives are exogenously imposed, performance is monitored and individual … characteristics are observed. Students are randomly assigned to a tournament scheme that fosters competition between coupled students … which students can neither compete, nor cooperate. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that competition induces …

We conduct a natural field experiment in a large retail chain to test basic predictions of tournament theory regarding … prize spread and noise. A random subset of the 208 stores participates in two-stage elimination tournaments. Tournaments …

behavior is almost non-existent. We study sabotage in tournaments in a controlled laboratory experiment and are able to confirm …Although relative performance schemes are pervasive in organizations reliable empirical data on induced sabotage … one of the key insights from theory: effort and sabotage increase with the wage spread. Additionally, we find that even in …

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 … high school grades and each pair was randomly assigned to one of three different tournaments. Random assignment neutralizes …

Many tournaments are plagued by sabotage among competitors. Typically, sabotage is welfare-reducing, but from an …, sabotage is typically hidden, making it difficult to assess its extent and its victims. Therefore, we use data from Judo World … Championships, where a rule change in 2009 basically constituted a natural experiment that introduced one costless opportunity for …

Tournaments are widely used to assign bonuses and determine promotions because of the link between relative performance … stimulate effort. Through a real-effort artefactual field experiment with factory workers and university students as a …

Using a controlled experiment, we examine the role of nurture in explaining the stylized fact that women shy away from … competition. Our subjects (students just under 15 years of age) attend publicly-funded single-sex and coeducational schools. We …

, and differential responses to luck account for about half of the gender performance gap in our experiment. These findings … help to explain both female underperformance in environments with repeated competition and the tendency for women to select … into tournaments at a lower rate than men …