Public Leaderboard Feedback in Sampling Competition: An Experimental Investigation

Stanton Hudja (), Brian Roberson () and Yaroslav Rosokha
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Stanton Hudja: Purdue University
Brian Roberson: Purdue University

Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Abstract: We investigate the role of performance feedback, in the form of a public leaderboard, in a sequential-sampling contest with costly observations. The player whose sequential random sample contains the observation with the highest value wins the contest and obtains a prize with a fixed value. We find that there exist parameter configurations such that in the subgame perfect equilibrium of contests with a fixed ending date (i.e., finite horizon), providing public performance feedback results in fewer expected observations and a lower expected value of the winning observation. We conduct a controlled laboratory experiment to test the theoretical predictions, and find that the experimental results largely support the theory. In addition, we investigate how individual characteristics affect competitive sequential-sampling activity. We find that risk aversion is a significant predictor of behavior both with and without leaderboard feedback, and that the direction of this effect is consistent with the theoretical predictions.

Keywords: Innovation Competitions; Experiments; Contests (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D83 D90 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chu:wpaper:19-34

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