@TechReport{iza:izadps:dp9766,
            	author={Houy, Nicolas and Nicolaï, Jean-Philippe and Villeval, Marie Claire},
            	title={Doing Your Best When Stakes Are High? Theory and Experimental Evidence},
            	year={2016},
	month={Feb},
            	institution={Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)},
            	address={Bonn},
            	type={IZA Discussion Paper},
            	number={9766},
            	url={https://www.iza.org/publications/dp9766},
	abstract={Achieving an ambitious goal frequently requires succeeding in a sequence of intermediary tasks, some being critical for the final outcome, and others not. Individuals are not always able to provide a level of effort sufficient to guarantee success in all the intermediary tasks. The ability to manage effort throughout the sequence of tasks is therefore critical.
In this paper we propose a criterion that defines the importance of a task and that identifies how an individual should optimally allocate a limited stock of exhaustible efforts over tasks. We test this importance criterion in a laboratory experiment that reproduces the main features of a tennis match. We show that our importance criterion is able to predict the individuals' performance and it outperforms the Morris importance criterion that defines the importance of a point in terms of its impact on the probability to achieve the final outcome. We also find no evidence of choking under pressure and stress, as proxied by electrophysiological measures.},
	keywords={experiment;Morris-importance;Skin Conductance Responses;choking under pressure;critical ability},
            }