According to the previous literature on hiring, ?rms face a trade-off when deciding on external recruiting: From an incentive perspective, external recruiting is harmful since admission of external candidates reduces internal workers’ career incentives. However, if external workers have high...

Participants of dynamic competition games may prefer to play with the rules of the game by systematically withholding e¤ort in the beginning. Such behavior is referred to as sandbagging. I consider a two-period con- test between heterogeneous players and analyze potential sandbagging of...

The paper addresses the problem of optimally matching heterogeneous players in a two-stage two-type Lazear-Rosen tournament in which the semifinal losers are eliminated. The organizer of the tournament can either choose two homogeneous semifinals -- one between two strong players and the other...

It is well-known that, in static models, minimum wages generate positive worker rents and, consequently, ine?ciently low effort. We show that this result does not necessarily extend to a dynamic context. The reason is that, in repeated employment relationships, ?rms may exploit workers’ future...

We consider a double-sided moral hazard problem where each party can renege on the signed contract since there does not exist any verifi- able performance signal. It is shown that ex-post litigation can restore incentives of the agent. Moreover, when the litigation can be settled by the parties...

Several empirical studies have challenged tournament theory by pointing out that (1) there is considerable pay variation within hierarchy levels, (2) promotion premiums only in part explain hierarchical wage differences and (3) external recruitment is observable on nearly any hierarchy level. We...

In an asymmetric tournament model with endogenous risk choice by the agents it is shown that equilibrium efforts decrease (increase) with risk if abilities are sufficiently similar (different). Risk also affects winning probabilities. The interaction of both effects is analyzed.

This paper discusses the properties of stylized U.S. ("U-type") and Japanese tournaments ("J-type"), which can both solve the unverifiability problem of labor contracts. Under a zero-profit condition, both tournament types will yield first-best efforts if workers are homogenous and risk neutral....

Individuals who compete in a contest-like situation (for example, in sports, in promotion tournaments, or in an appointment contest) may have an incentive to illegally utilize resources in order to improve their relative positions. We analyze such doping within a tournament game between two...

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...