%0 Report
        %A Houy, Nicolas
%A Nicolaï, Jean-Philippe
%A Villeval, Marie Claire
        %T Doing Your Best When Stakes Are High? Theory and Experimental Evidence
        %D 2016
        %8 2016 Feb
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 9766
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp9766
        %X 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.
        %K experiment
%K Morris-importance
%K Skin Conductance Responses
%K choking under pressure
%K critical ability