Don't hate the player, hate the game: Uncovering the foundations of cheating in contests

E. Dutcher, Daniela Glätzle-Rützler and Dmitry Ryvkin

Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck

Abstract: Contests are meant to attract the best performers and incentivize high effort, however, they may also attract cheaters who try to win via illicit means which crowds out the best performers. We use a laboratory experiment to explore the role of self-selection in contests with a possibility of lying in a real effort task. Contrary to common wisdom, we do not find evidence that contests disproportionately attract intrinsic cheaters. However, we find that contests fail at selecting the best performers, as no difference is observed in the actual or perceived ability of those who selected into the contest versus those who selected into a comparable noncompetitive pay scheme.

Keywords: contest; cheating; entry; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D02 K42 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inn:wpaper:2016-29

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