Empirical and experimental papers find that high-powered incentives may reduce performance rather than improve it; a phenomenon referred to as "choking under pressure". We show that competition for high ability workers nevertheless leads firms to offer high bonus payments, thereby deliberately...

This paper examines changes in the motivation of physicians at work since the start of the salary reforms in 2008. These reforms included a shift from a fixed salary system to performance-based remuneration and an overall increase in salaries. The data of six surveys of health workers from...

We examine the relationships with firm performance of the internal pay gap among individual members of the top management team (TMT) and the compensation level of TMT members relative to their industry peers. We find that pay gap is positively related to firm performance and that this positive...

It may be surprising that one of the most popular compensation schemes in business is so open to being hacked - to having managers cheat to win. We explore tournament theory to detail its vulnerabilities to various forms of cheating unilateral and multilateral. We identify who is most likely to...