TY - RPRT AU - Brandts, Jordi AU - Riedl, Arno AU - Winden, Frans van TI - Competition and Well-Being PY - 2005/Sep/ PB - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) CY - Bonn T2 - IZA Discussion Paper IS - 1769 UR - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp1769 AB - This paper experimentally studies the effects of competition in an environment where people's actions can not be contractually fixed. We find that, in comparison with no competition, the presence of competition does neither increase efficiency nor does it yield any gains in earnings for the short side of the exchange relation. Moreover, competition has a clearly negative impact on the disposition towards others and on the experienced well-being of those on the long side. Since subjective well-being improves only for those on the short side competition contributes to larger inequalities in experienced well-being. All in all competition does not show up as a positive force in our environment. KW - happiness KW - well-being KW - laboratory experiment KW - emotions KW - market interaction KW - competition ER -