Observing your competitor – The role of effort information in two-stage tournaments

Sandra Ludwig and Gabriele K. Lünser

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2012, vol. 33, issue 1, 166-182

Abstract: We consider two-stage tournaments with different information structures: Either competitors observe each others’ first-stage effort before entering the second stage or not. In laboratory experiments, we observe that subjects adjust their effort to the effort information (if available): While subjects who lead continue to exert the higher effort, they tend to lower their effort relative to the first stage, whereas those who lag increase it. Moreover, the larger the first-stage effort gap, the lower are second-stage efforts. These observations are consistent with our predictions for status-concerned subjects who care about their relative (interim) standing and the size of the effort gap.

Keywords: Tournament design; Status; Feedback; Incentives; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D80 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487011001577
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:33:y:2012:i:1:p:166-182

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2011.09.011

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read

More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().