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Incentives in Economic Departments: Testing Tournaments?

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Author Info
Coupé, Tom () (EERC, Kiev)
Smeets, Valerie () (Department of Economics, Aarhus School of Business)
Warzynski, Frederic () (Department of Economics, Aarhus School of Business)

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Abstract

Existing tests of tournament theory have recently been criticized

for their failure to distinguish tournaments from other theories that

have similar effects like standards and marginal productivity theory

(Gibbs, 1994, 1996; Prendergast, 1999). In this paper, we propose a

series of empirical tests that allow to make this distinction. We use

a dataset of average wages by rank in US economic departments over

the period 1977-1997 and link this information to individual production

data to test whether wage gaps affect the productivity and cooperative

behavior of economists and to control for marginal productivity theory.

We find that the wage gap is increasing along the hierarchy, even when

controlling for production by rank. Moreover, wages are more sensitive

to productivity for higher ranks. We find some evidence that higher

wage gaps lead to higher productivity but not that wage gaps depend

on the number of contestants nor that they lead to less cooperation.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 03-25.

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Length: 31 pages
Date of creation: 26 May 2003
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:aareco:2003_025

Contact details of provider:
Postal: The Aarhus School of Business, Prismet, Silkeborgvej 2, DK 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Phone: +45 89 486396
Fax: +45 8615 5175
Web page: http://www.asb.dk/departments/nat.aspx
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Related research
Keywords: incentives; sorting; tournaments; standards; marginal productivity; economic departments;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
J00 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - General
M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Edward P. Lazear & Sherwin Rosen, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," NBER Working Papers 0401, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-15, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Bognanno, Michael L, 2001. "Corporate Tournaments," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 290-315, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Michael L. Bognanno, 1990. "The incentive effects of tournaments revisited: Evidence from the European PGA tour," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 43(3), pages 74-88, February.
  5. Eriksson, Tor, 1999. "Executive Compensation and Tournament Theory: Empirical Tests on Danish Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(2), pages 262-80, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Sherwin Rosen, 1982. "Authority, Control, and the Distribution of Earnings," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 311-323, Autumn. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Lazear, Edward P, 1989. "Pay Equality and Industrial Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 561-80, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Ehrenberg, Ronald G & Bognanno, Michael L, 1990. "Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1307-24, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Coupé, Tom & Smeets, Valérie & Warzynski, Frédéric, 2003. "Incentives, Sorting and Productivity along the Career: Evidence from a Sample of Top Economists," Working Papers 03-16, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Kenneth W Clements & Izan H Y Izan, 2007. "The Stairway to the Top: The Remuneration of Academic Executives," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 07-14, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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This page was last updated on 2009-11-22.


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