This article analyzes top-level basketball competitions and measures the effect of superstar presence on effort provision in rank-order tournaments. I extend the previous literature to team competitions for male and female teams, as well as different institutional settings over a long period of...

There is economic pressure towards the postponement of the retirement age, but employers are still reluctant to employ older workers. We investigate the comparative behavior of juniors and seniors in experiments conducted both onsite with the employees of two large firms and in a conventional...

It is a puzzle why people often evaluate consequences of choices separately (narrow bracketing) rather than jointly (broad bracketing). We study the hypothesis that a present-biased individual, who faces two tasks, may bracket his goals narrowly for motivational reasons. Goals motivate because...

The present thesis examines if and to what extent microeconomic theory can explain the observable behavior of individuals in competitive environments. On the basis of self-compiled datasets from (professional) sports competitions as well as a widely broadcasted TV quiz-show two research...