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Entry into winner-take-all and proportional-prize contests: An experimental study

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Author Info

  • Cason, Timothy N.
  • Masters, William A.
  • Sheremeta, Roman M.

Abstract

This experiment compares the performance of two contest designs: a standard winner-take-all tournament with a single fixed prize, and a novel proportional-payment design in which that same prize is divided among contestants by their share of total achievement. We find that proportional prizes elicit more entry and more total achievement than the winner-take-all tournament. The proportional-prize contest performs better by limiting the degree to which heterogeneity among contestants discourages weaker entrants, without altering the performance of stronger entrants. These findings could inform the design of contests for technological and other improvements, which are widely used by governments and philanthropic donors to elicit more effort on targeted economic and technological development activities.

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Public Economics.

Volume (Year): 94 (2010)
Issue (Month): 9-10 (October)
Pages: 604-611

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Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:94:y:2010:i:9-10:p:604-611

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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578

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Keywords: Performance pay Tournament Piece rate Tournament design Contest Experiments Risk aversion Feedback Gender;

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References

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Jeffrey A. Flory & Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2010. "Do Competitive Work Places Deter Female Workers? A Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment on Gender Differences in Job-Entry Decisions," NBER Working Papers 16546, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Curtis R. Price & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2012. "Endowment Origin, Demographic Effects and Individual Preferences in Contests," Working Papers 12-07, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
  3. Marco Faravelli & Luca Stanca, 2010. "When Less is More: Rationing and Rent Dissipation in Stochastic Contests," Discussion Papers Series 412, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
  4. Shakun D. Mago & Roman M. Sheremeta & Andrew Yates, 2012. "Best-of-Three Contest Experiments: Strategic versus Psychological Momentum," Working Papers 12-30, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
  5. Loukas Balafoutas & Glenn Dutcher & Florian Lindner & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2012. "The optimal allocation of prizes in tournaments of heterogeneous agents," Working Papers 2012-08, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck.
  6. Sheremeta, Roman M. & Wu, Steven Y., 2012. "Testing Canonical Tournament Theory: On the Impact of Risk, Social Preferences and Utility Structure," IZA Discussion Papers 6304, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  7. Sheremeta, Roman, 2013. "Overbidding and Heterogeneous Behavior in Contest Experiments," MPRA Paper 44124, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  8. Roman M. Sheremeta & William A. Masters & Timothy N. Cason, 2012. "Winner-Take-All and Proportional-Prize Contests: Theory and Experimental Results," Working Papers 12-04, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
  9. Francesco Fallucchi & Elke Renner & Martin Sefton, 2013. "Information feedback and contest structure in rent-seeking games," Discussion Papers 2013-02, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
  10. Nagore Iriberri & Pedro Rey-Biel, 2011. "Let's (not) talk about sex: The effect of information provision on gender differences in performance under competition," Economics Working Papers 1288, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
  11. Jordi Brandts & Valeska Groenert & Christina Rott, 2012. "The Impact of Advice on Women's and Men's Selection into Competition," Working Papers 663, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
  12. Glenn Dutcher, 2011. "How does the social distance between an employee and a manager affect employee competition for a reward?," Working Papers 2011-29, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck.
  13. Jordi Brandts & Valeska Groener & Christina Rott, 2012. "The impact of advice on women's and men's selection into competition," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 912.12, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
  14. Matthias Sutter & Daniela R?tzler, 2010. "Gender differences in competition emerge early in life," Working Papers 2010-14, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck.
  15. E. Glenn Dutcher & Loukas Balafoutas & Florian Lindner & Dmitry Ryvkin & Matthias Sutter, 2013. "Strive to be first or avoid being last: An experiment on relative performance incentives," Working Papers 2013-08, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck.

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