The optimal role model

Julien Duc and Côme Poirier

Economics Letters, 2024, vol. 234, issue C

Abstract: Comparison with peers, including role models, is an essential force driving individual’s behaviors. We study how the introduction of such a role model can influence individual’s action and how to drive agents to exert maximal effort through comparative emulation. We consider a planner whose goal is to maximize the effort exerted by an agent. The agent’s utility is composed of a direct and a relative component. The planner can hire a role model to induce competition through comparison and increase the agent’s effort. We show that the agent’s response to the role model effort exhibits two distinct behaviors : emulation and discouragement. These two behaviors depend on whether the role model effort is above a certain threshold. In addition, we show that this response is discontinuous at the threshold, suggesting important implications for education and organizational design.

Keywords: Relative utility; Social comparison; Emulation; Role model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 D81 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:234:y:2024:i:c:s0165176523004950

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111469

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