Competitiveness in Dynamic Group Contests : Evidence from Combined Field and Lab Data

We analyse data from a field setting in which students participate in a dynamic group contest with feedback. We combine this information with a laboratory measure of competitiveness. We find that competitive groups perform worse overall. In addition, we find that participants react to intermediate performance: A better rank in a given period increases the number of points in the subsequent period, even after controlling for group and time fixed effects. The effect is significantly stronger for competitive groups. We show that this difference in the sensitivity to dynamic incentives can explain the overall negative effect of competitiveness on performance