Feedback in Tournaments under Commitment Problems: The-ory and Experimental Evidence

Oliver Gürtler () and Christine Harbring
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Christine Harbring: Department of Personnel Economics and Human Resource Management, University of Cologne, Herbert-Lewin-Str. 2, 50931 Köln, Germany christine.harbring@uni-koeln.de

No 219, Discussion Papers from SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze a principal's optimal feedback policy in tournaments. We close a gap in the literature by assuming the principal to be unable to commit to a certain policy at the beginning of the tournament. Our analysis shows that in equilibrium the principal reveals in-termediate information regarding the agents’ previous performances if these performances are not too different. Moreover, we investigate a situation where the principal is not able to credi-bly communicate her information. Having presented our formal analysis, we test these results using data from laboratory experiments. The experimental findings provide some support for the model.

Keywords: tournament; commitment problems; feedback; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 J33 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
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Related works:
Working Paper: Feedback in Tournaments under Commitment Problems: Theory and Experimental Evidence (2007)
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