Delfgaauw, J., Dur, R., Non, J. and Verbeke, W. (2015). The Effects of Prize Spread and Noise in Elimination Tournaments: A Natural Field Experiment Journal of Labor Economics, 33(3):521--569.
-
Affiliated authors
-
Publication year2015
-
JournalJournal of Labor Economics
We conduct a natural field experiment in a retail chain to test predictions of tournament theory regarding prize spread and noise. A random subset of the 208 stores participates in two-stage elimination tournaments. Tournaments differ in the distribution of prize money across winners of the first and second rounds of the tournament. As predicted, we find that a more convex prize spread increases second-round performance at the expense of first-round performance, although the magnitude of these effects is small. Moreover, the treatment effect is larger for stores with more stable past performance.