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Responses to risk in tournaments

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  • Rankin, Frederick W.
  • Sayre, Todd L.

Abstract

Due to their inefficient use of information, promotion incentives, which can be modeled as tournaments, can induce sub-optimal actions on the part of managers. This is a problem for firms because it leads to choices that do not maximize profit. This also can pose interpretation and comparison problems for research studies that employ tournament incentives. We demonstrate a situation where tournament incentives eliminate the effects of project risk on managers' decisions as concerns with winning take precedence over concerns of maximizing expected profit. We also report the results of an experiment and find actual behavior to be fairly well explained by theoretical predictions. However, we find systematic deviations that lead to decisions that are more consistent with profit maximization than the economic theory predicts.

Suggested Citation

  • Rankin, Frederick W. & Sayre, Todd L., 2011. "Responses to risk in tournaments," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 53-62, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:36:y:2011:i:1:p:53-62
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    Cited by:

    1. Baik, Bok & Evans, John H. & Kim, Kyonghee & Yanadori, Yoshio, 2016. "White collar incentives," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 34-49.
    2. Zalewska, Anna, 2014. "Gentlemen do not talk about money: Remuneration dispersion and firm performance relationship on British boards," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 40-57.
    3. Ivo Schedlinsky & Friedrich Sommer & Arnt Wöhrmann, 2016. "Risk-taking in tournaments: an experimental analysis," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 86(8), pages 837-866, November.

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