Experimental economics is used to compare tournaments (T) and fixed performance contracts (F) when agents have heterogeneous costs. Results suggest that: (1) There is no difference in average pooled effort across contracts, (2) high ability agents exert higher effort than low ability agents...

Two well-known hypotheses from the literature on tournaments are that (1) tournaments can filter out common shocks thereby reducing agents risk exposure; and (2) disincentive effects can arise when a tournament scheme is administered on a group of mixed ability agents. While handicapping and/or...

Experimental economics is used to compare tournaments (T) and fixed performance contracts (F) when agents have heterogeneous costs. Our primary findings were: (1) There is no statistical difference in average pooled effort (effort by high ability and low ability subjects are pooled together to...