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...

Although relative performance schemes are pervasive in organizations reliable empirical dataon induced sabotage behavior is almost non-existent. We study sabotage in tournaments in acontrolled laboratory experiment and are able to confirm one of the key insights from theory:effort and sabotage...

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...