We analyse incentive problems in collective production environments where contributors are compensated according to their observed and ranked efforts. This provides incentives to the contributors to choose first best efforts.

We show that the optimal prize structure of symmetric n-player Tullock tournaments assigns the entire prize pool to the winner, provided that a symmetric pure strategy equilibrium exists. If such an equilibrium fails to exist under the winner-take-all structure, we construct the optimal prize...

We analyse incentive problems in team and partnership structures where the only available information to condition a contract on is some noisy ranking of the partners' efforts. This enables us to ensure both first best efficient effort levels for all partners and the redistribution of output...