Tournaments for the endogenous allocating of prizes within workteams - Theory and experimental evidence

We present a model where compensation within a workteam is determined endogenously by the use of a rank-order tournament. Team members compete in their efforts for the right to propose the distribution of a prize within the team. The implementation of a proposal requires the approval of other team members. Failure to reach an agreement is costly and the role of proposer rotates in the order of members' efforts. We show in an experiment that tournaments elicit higher efforts than random determination of the proposer role. Proposers get a significantly larger share of the prize than non-proposers.