Carrots and Sticks: Prizes and Punishments in Contests
Benny Modovanu (),
Aner Sela and
Xianwen Shi
Additional contact information
Benny Modovanu: Department of Economics, University of Bonn, Germany
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Benny Moldovanu ()
No 802, Working Papers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics
Abstract:
We study optimal contest design in situations where the designer can reward high performance agents with positive prizes and punish low performance agents with negative prizes. We link the optimal prize structure to the curvature of distribution of abilities in the population. In particular, we identify conditions under which, even if punishment is costly, punishing the bottom is more effective than rewarding the top in eliciting effort input . If punishment is costless, we study the optimal number of punishments in the contest.
Keywords: Contests; All-pay auctions; Punishments; Order Statistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 D82 J31 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/humsos/Econ/Workingpapers/0802.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: CARROTS AND STICKS: PRIZES AND PUNISHMENTS IN CONTESTS (2012) 
Working Paper: Carrots and Sticks: Prizes and Punishments in Contests (2010) 
Working Paper: Carrots and Sticks: Prizes and Punishments in Contests (2008) 
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:bgu:wpaper:0802
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Papers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aamer Abu-Qarn ().