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...

This paper shows that portfolio constraints have important implications for management compensation and performance evaluation. In particular, in the presence of portfolio constraints, allowing for benchmarking can be bene…cial. Benchmark design arises as an alternative effort inducement...

Efficiency wage effects of profit sharing are combined with option values related to stochastic future pofit variations. These option effects occur if the workers' profit share is fixed by long-term contracts. The Pareto-improving optimal level of the sharing ratio is calculated for two...

Theoretical analyses of (optimal) performance measures are typically performed within the realm of the linear agency model. This model implies that, for a given compensation scheme, the agent’s optimal effort is unrelated to the amount of noise in the performance measure. In contrast,...

Efficiency wage effects of profit sharing are combined with option values related to stochastic future profit variations. These option effects occur if the workers' profit share is fixed by long-term contracts. The Pareto-improving optimal level of the sharing ratio is calculated for two...

This paper studies the impact of incentives on worker self-selection in a controlled laboratory experiment. In a first step we elicit subjects' productivity levels. Subjects then face the choice between a fixed or a variable payment scheme. Depending on the treatment, the variable payment is...

I study the effect of task difficulty on workers' effort. I find that task difficulty has an inverse-U effect on effort and that this effect is quantitatively large, especially when compared to the effect of conditional monetary rewards. Difficulty acts as a mediator of monetary rewards:...

Incentive schemes not only influence the effort provision of workers, but might also induce sorting. As drivers of self-selection, the literature mainly focuses on measures of productivity; however, other variables, such as preferences, beliefs and personality, also play a role. With this paper,...

This paper analyzes the impact of labor market competition and skill-biased technical change on the structure of compensation. The model combines multitasking and screening, embedded into a Hotelling-like framework. Competition for the most talented workers leads to an escalating reliance on...

Wir analysieren das Gesetz zur Angemessenheit der Vorstandsvergütung. Ferner arbeiten wir einige aufgrund wirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Überlegungen zu erwartende Probleme heraus und prognostizieren mögliche ökonomische Auswirkungen des Gesetzes. Des Weiteren gehen wir im Rahmen einer...