Incentive effects of tournament size optimization on local officials in China

Jixiang Yu and Kunrong Shen

Journal of Asian Economics, 2022, vol. 83, issue C

Abstract: This study proposes a simple economic intuition that the efficacy of tournaments closely correlates with the number of individuals participating in the competition. Precisely, tournaments with too few (too many) contestants are not conducive to stimulating efforts because of windfalls (sure failure). We modeled the ideas mentioned above and presented the significance of a moderately sized tournament in stimulating individual efforts. As local officials in China are involved in tournament, their efforts differ with the number of those competing with each other. By assessing the exogenous impact of the adjustment of prefecture-level administrative divisions on the tournament size of intercounty competition, the empirical results of this study align with the theoretical expectations.

Keywords: Tournament scale; Local officials; Individual efforts; Incentive effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 J45 P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:asieco:v:83:y:2022:i:c:s1049007822001051

DOI: 10.1016/j.asieco.2022.101549

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