Competitiveness in dynamic group contests: Evidence from combined field and lab data

Yann Girard () and Florian Hett
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Yann Girard: GSEFM, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

No 1303, Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Abstract: We analyse data from a field setting in which students participate in a dynamic group contest with feedback. We combine this information with a laboratory measure of competitiveness. We ?nd that competitive groups perform worse overall. In addition, we find that participants react to intermediate performance: A better rank in a given period increases the number of points in the subsequent period, even after controlling for group and time fixed effects. The effect is significantly stronger for competitive groups. We show that this difference in the sensitivity to dynamic incentives can explain the overall negative effect of competitiveness on performance.

Keywords: Dynamic contest; competitiveness; field experiments; lab experiments; rank feedback (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D03 D74 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2013-04-01, Revised 2013-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_1303.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jgu:wpaper:1303

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