How to hire voluntary helpers? We shed new light on this question by reporting a field experiment in which we invited 2,859 students to help at the 'ESA Europe 2012' conference. Invitation emails varied non-monetary and monetary incentives to convince subjects to offer help. Students could apply...

We study, how help can be fostered under relative rewards by means of team bonus and corporate value statements. A simple model analysis suggests that team members help less as relative rewards increase. As one potential measure to encourage help, we augment relative rewards with team rewards...

We experimentally investigate a simple version of Holmström?s career concerns model in which firms compete for agents in two consecutive periods. Profits of firms are determined by agents? unknown ability and the effort they choose. Before making second-period wage offers firms are informed...

The impact of transparency on the extent of reciprocal behavior is investigated in a simple repeated gift exchange experiment, where principals set wages and agents respond by choosing effort levels. In addition to the efforts the principals? payoffs are determined by a random component. It is...

Tournament incentive schemes offer payments dependent on relative performance and thereby are intended to motivate agents to exert productive effort. Unfortunately, however, an agent may also be tempted to destroy the production of his competitors in order to improve the own relative position....

In a contest players compete for winning a prize by effort and thereby increasing their probability of winning. Contestants, however, could also improve their own relative position by harming the other players. We experimentally analyze contests with heterogeneous agents who may individually...

From an employer's perspective a tournament should induce agents to exert productive activities but refrain from destructive ones. We experimentally test the predictive power of a tournament model which suggests that within a reasonable framework productive and destructive activities are not...

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...

Die vorliegende Studie beleuchtet das Problem der Motivationsverdrängung bei Anreizsetzung durch Stücklöhne. Modelliert wird eine einfache experimentelle Prinzipal-Agenten-Beziehung. In einer ersten Bedingung kann der Prinzipal einen fixen Transfer an einen Agenten leisten. In einer zweiten...

We study how help can be fostered by means of a team bonus in the presence of rank-order tournaments. In a simple model we combine elements of relative rewards and a team bonus and study their effect on effort, help and sabotage. Quite intuitively the theoretical analysis suggests that team...