Inequality Aversion and Performance in and on the Field

Benno Torgler (), Markus Schaffner (), Bruno Frey, Sascha L. Schmidt () and Uwe Dulleck
Additional contact information
Benno Torgler: QUT
Markus Schaffner: QUT
Sascha L. Schmidt: European Business School, Oestrich Winkel, Germany

No 36, NCER Working Paper Series from National Centre for Econometric Research

Abstract: The experimental literature and studies using survey data have established that people care a great deal about their relative economic position and not solely, as standard economic theory assumes, about their absolute economic position. Individuals are concerned about social comparisons. However, behavioral evidence in the field is rare. This paper provides an empirical analysis, testing the model of inequality aversion using two unique panel data sets for basketball and soccer players. We find support that the concept of inequality aversion helps to understand how the relative income situation affects performance in a real competitive environment with real tasks and real incentives.

Keywords: Inequality aversion; relative income; positional concerns; envy; social comparison; performance; interdependent preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D00 D60 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2008-10-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ncer.edu.au/papers/documents/NCER_WpNo36Oct08.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.ncer.edu.au:443 (Bad file descriptor) (http://www.ncer.edu.au/papers/documents/NCER_WpNo36Oct08.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.ncer.edu.au/papers/documents/NCER_WpNo36Oct08.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Inequality Aversion and Performance in and on the Field (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:qut:auncer:2008-25

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NCER Working Paper Series from National Centre for Econometric Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by School of Economics and Finance ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).