Task difficulty, incentive effects, and the selection of high-variance strategies: An experimental examination of tournament behavior

Labour Economics

Volumn 10, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 481-497

  Vandegrift, Donald ^a   Brown, Paul ^b  

^a The College of New Jersey   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

Experiment; Task difficulty; Tournament

Indexed keywords

EID: 0037634015     PISSN: 09275371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0927-5371(03)00033-2     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. Balzer W. Sulsky L. Hammer L. Summer K. Task information, cognitive information, or functional validity information: which components of cognitive feedback affect performance? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 53 1992 35-54
2. Bhattacharya S. Guasch J.L. Heterogeneity, tournaments and hierarchies Journal of Political Economy 96 1988 867-881
3. Bolle F. Learning to make good predictions in time series In: Tietz R. Albers W. Selton R. (Eds.), Bounded Rational Behavior in Experimental Games and Markets 1988 37-50 Springer-Verlag Berlin
4. Brown P.M. Learning from experience, reference points and decision costs Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 27 1995 381-399
5. Brown P.M. Experimental evidence on the importance of competing for profits on forecasting accuracy Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 33 1998 259-269
6. Brown K. Harlow W. Starks L. Of tournaments and temptations: an analysis of managerial fund incentives in the Mutual Fund Industry Journal of Finance 51 1996 85-110
7. Bruce A.C. Johnson J.E. Decision making under risk: effect of complexity on performance Psychological Reports 79 1996 67-76
8. Bull C. Schotter A. Weigelt K. Tournaments and piece rates: an experimental study Journal of Political Economy 95 1987 1-33
9. Castellan N. Decision making with multiple probability cues In: Castellan N. Pisoni D. Potts G. (Eds.), Cognitive Theory vol. 2 1977 L. Erbaum Associates Hillsdale, NJ
10. Drago R. Turnbull G. The incentive effects of tournaments with positive externalities among workers Southern Economic Journal 55 1988 100-106
11. Ehrenberg R.G. Bognanno M.L. Do tournaments have incentive effects? Journal of Political Economy 98 1990 1307-1324
12. Ehrenberg R.G. Bognanno M.L. The incentive effects of tournaments revisited: evidence from the European PGA tour Industrial and Labor Relations Review 43 1990 74-88
13. Gibbons R. Murphy K. Relative performance evaluation for chief executive officers Industrial and Labor Relations Review 43 1990 30-51
14. Green J.R. Stokey N.L. A comparison of tournaments and contracts Journal of Political Economy 91 1983 349-365
15. Holmstrom B. Moral hazard in teams Bell Journal of Economics 13 1982 324-340
16. Huck S. Weizäcker G. Risk, complexity, and deviations from EV-maximization results of a lottery choice experiment Journal of Economic Psychology 20 1999 699-715
17. Knoeber C.R. Thurman W.N. Testing the theory of tournaments: an empirical analysis of broiler production Journal of Labor Economics 12 1994 155-179
18. Lazear E.P. Rosen S. Rank-order tournaments as optimum labor contracts Journal of Political Economy 89 1981 841-864
19. Lenney E. Women's self-confidence in achievement settings Psychological Bulletin 84 1977 1-13
20. Mador G. Sonsino D. Benzion U. On complexity and lotteries' evaluation-three experimental observations Journal of Economic Psychology 21 2000 625-637
21. Nalebuff B. Stiglitz J. Prizes and incentives: toward a general theory of compensation and competition Bell Journal of Economics 14 1983 21-43
22. Orszag J.M. A new look at incentive effects and golf tournaments Economics Letters 46 1994 77-88
23. Pelham B.W. Neter E. The effect of motivation of judgment depends on the difficulty of the judgment Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68 1995 581-594
24. Schmalensee R. An experimental study of expectation formation Econometrica 44 1976 17-41
25. Sprinkle G.B. The effect of incentive contracts on learning and performance The Accounting Review 75 2000 299-326
26. Tversky A. Kahneman D. Loss aversion and riskless choice: a reference dependent model Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 1991 1039-1061
27. Vandegrift, D., Brown, P., 2001. High-variance strategies in tournament competition: overconfidence, gender, and feedback. (unpublished manuscript).
28. Wilcox N.T. Lottery choice: incentives, complexity and decision time The Economic Journal 103 1993 1397-1417.