A standard tournament contract specifies only tournament prizes. If agents’ performance is measured on a cardinal scale, the principal can complement the tournament contract by a gap which defines the minimum distance by which the best performing agent must beat the second best to receive...

Previous work on moral-hazard problems has shown that, under certain conditions, bonus contracts create optimal individual incentives for risk-neutral workers. In our paper we demonstrate that, if a firm employs at least two workers, it may further bene.t from combining worker compensation via a...

We analyze whether incentives from relative performance pay are reduced or enhanced if a department is possibly terminated due to a crisis. Our benchmark model shows that incentives decrease in a severe crisis, but are boosted given a minor crisis since efforts are strategic complements in the...

Considering several main types of dynamic contests (the race, the tug-of-war, elimination contests and iterated incumbency fights) we identify a common pattern: the discouragement effect. This effect explains why the sum of rent-seeking efforts often falls considerably short of the prize that is...

The government wants two tasks to be performed. In each task, unobservable effort can be exerted by a wealth-constrained private contractor. If the government faces no binding budget constraints, it is optimal to bundle the tasks. The contractor in charge of both tasks then gets a bonus payment...

An inventor can invest research effort to come up with an innovation. Once an innovation is made, a contract is negotiated and unobservable effort must be exerted to develop a product. In the absence of liability constraints, the inventor's investment incentives are increasing in his bargaining...

This experiment compares the performance of two contest designs: a standard winner-take-all tournament with a single fixed prize, and a novel proportional-payment design in which that same prize is divided among contestants by their share of total achievement. We find that proportional prizes...

It is well-known that, in static models, minimum wages generate positive worker rents and, consequently, inefficiently low e?ort. 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’...

This paper analyzes a multi-task agency model with a risk-neutral and financially constrained agent. The agent's performance evaluation is thereby incongruent, i.e. it does not perfectly reflect the relative contribution of the agent's multi-dimensional effort to firm's profit. This paper...

This paper studies sabotage in tournaments with at least three contestants, where the contestants know each other well. Every contestant has an incentive to direct sabotage specifically against his most dangerous rival. In equilibrium, contestants who choose a higher productive effort are...