Awarding a grand prize to the player who wins most often in a series of contests links the contests together and makes incentives in the current contest depend upon past performance. A lucky player who wins early faces relatively stronger incentives to exert effort because of his early success....

This paper fills in a gap in the tournament literature by developing a framework that can be used to analyze both cardinal and ordinal tournaments, as well as piece rates. The analysis aims to obtain a Pareto ranking of cardinal versus ordinal tournaments, which is an open question in the...

This paper provides a solution to a puzzle in the analysis of tournaments, that of why there is no agent discrimination or differential contracting in certain business practice settings. The paper examines the problem of a principal contracting with multiple agents whose activities are subject...

This paper provides a solution to a puzzle in the analysis of tournaments, that of why there is no agent discrimination in practice. The paper examines the problem of a principal contracting with multiple agents whose activities are subject to common shocks, when there is moral hazard and...