Hj Holm
Vice Dean Research Education, Professor
GRIND OR GAMBLE? AN EXPERIMENT ON EFFORT AND SPREAD SEEKING IN CONTESTS
Author
Summary, in English
We conduct a contest experiment to study if spread seeking and effort can be managed when participants can invest in increasing both the mean and the spread of an uncertain performance variable. Subjects are treated with different prize schemes and in accordance with theory, we observe higher investments in spread for the winner-take-all scheme. Both types of investments can be controlled with a three-level prize scheme. However, the control management is imperfect and behavior is characterized by inertia. We also explore the correlation between effort and spread across subjects and find that is robustly positive.
Department/s
- Department of Economics
Publishing year
2020-01-01
Language
English
Pages
169-183
Publication/Series
Economic Inquiry
Volume
58
Issue
1
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell
Topic
- Economics
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0095-2583