We analyze the impact of social comparison on optimal contract design under imperfect labor market competition for managerial talent. Adding a disutility of social comparison as induced by a ranking of verifiable efforts to the multi-task model by Bénabou and Tirole (2016), we demonstrate that...

This article develops a new rationale for the emergence of pay-for-performance contracts where the labor market is competitive, workers are risk averse, and firms are risk neutral and unaware of workers' productivities. The article shows that the prevalence of pay for performance rises and the...

We study theoretically and experimentally the role of fatigue and recovery within a competitive work environment. At work, agents usually make their effort choice in response to competition and monetary incentives. At the same time, they have to take into account fatigue, which accumulates over...

If agents are exposed to continual competitive pressure, how does a short-term variation of the severity of the competition affect agents' performance? In a real-effort laboratory experiment, we study a one-time increase in incentives in a sequence of equally incentivized contests. Our results...

Prior research, primarily based on lab experiments, suggests that females might be more averse to competition than males and could be more inclined towards collaboration, instead. Were these findings to generalize to adults across the workforce, there could be profound implications for...

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard, private information and risk-averse agents. Two vertically differentiated firms compete for agents by offering contracts with fixed and variable...

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard and risk-averse agents, who have private information on their productivity. Two vertically differentiated firms compete for agents by offering contracts...

Remuneration systems in the banking industry, particularly bonus payments, have frequently been blamed for contributing to the build-up of risks leading to the recent financial crisis. In our model banks compete for managerial talent that is private information. Competition for talent sets...

This paper investigates the factors that make teams successful in competitive environments. In collaboration with a medium-sized Latin-American bank, we designed a series of contests among the branches of the bank, in which we varied the prize structure of the tournaments (in some tournaments,...

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard and risk-averse agents, who have private information on their productivity. Two vertically differentiated firms compete for agents by offering contracts...