Yes Men in Tournaments

Jason G. Cummins and Ingmar Nyman ()

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), 2013, vol. 169, issue 4, 621-659

Abstract: We study a rank-order tournament in which employees acquire and use private information for an investment decision. In this environment, competition can turn employees into yes men who make investment decisions that excessively agree with preconceived notions. The specter of yes-man behavior may drive the tournament incentive intensity and the employees' information-collection effort either to zero or above the first-best efficient levels. We also show that yes-man problems are alleviated by a stronger correlation between the employees' sources of uncertainty and by the use of individual compensation contracts rather than a tournament.

JEL-codes: D82 J33 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/yes-men-in- ... 45613x13806312325779 (text/html)
Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

Related works:
Working Paper: “Yes-Men in Tournaments (2007)
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:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201312)169:4_621:ymit_2.0.tx_2-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany

DOI: 10.1628/093245613X13806312325779

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) is currently edited by Gerd Mühlheußer and Bayer, Ralph-C

More articles in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) from Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Wolpert ().