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Hj Holm

Vice Dean Research Education, Professor

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GRIND OR GAMBLE? AN EXPERIMENT ON EFFORT AND SPREAD SEEKING IN CONTESTS

Author

  • Ola Andersson
  • Håkan J. Holm
  • Erik Wengström

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