Incentives versus Sorting in Tournaments: Evidence from a Field Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Leuven, Edwin; Oosterbeek, Hessel; Sonnemans, Joep; van der Klaauw, Bas
• 署名单位: Institut Polytechnique de Paris; ENSAE Paris; University of Amsterdam; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF LABOR ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0734-306X
• DOI: 10.1086/659345
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 637-658
• 关键词: compensation; performance; systems

摘要

Existing field evidence on rank-order tournaments typically does not allow disentangling incentive and sorting effects. We conduct a field experiment illustrating the confounding effect. Students in an introductory microeconomics course selected themselves into tournaments with low, medium, or high prizes for the best score at the final exam. Nonexperimental analysis of the results would suggest that higher rewards induce higher productivity, but a comparison between treatment and control groups reveals that there is no such effect. This stresses the importance of nonrandom sorting into tournaments.