TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Delfgaauw, Josse
AU  - Dur, Robert
AU  - Non, Arjan
AU  - Verbeke, Willem
        TI  - The Effects of Prize Spread and Noise in Elimination Tournaments: A Natural Field Experiment
        PY  - 2012/Apr/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 6480
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp6480
        AB  - We conduct a natural field experiment in a large retail chain to test basic predictions of tournament theory regarding prize spread and noise. A random subset of the 208 stores participates in two-stage elimination tournaments. Tournaments differ in the distribution of prize money across winners of the first and second round of the tournament. As predicted by theory, we find that a more convex prize spread increases performance in the second round at the expense of first-round performance, although the magnitude of these effects is small. Moreover, the treatment effect is significantly larger for stores that historically have relatively stable performance as compared to stores with more noisy performance.
        KW  - field experiment
KW  - incentives
KW  - prize spread
KW  - elimination tournaments
KW  - performance measurement
        ER  -