We investigate the effect of employee heterogeneity on the incentive to put forth effort in a market-based tournament. Employers use the tournament's outcome to estimate employees' abilities and accordingly condition their wage offers. Employees put forth effort, because by doing so they...

We analyze the interaction of explicit and implicit contracts in a model with selfish and fair principals. Fair principals are willing to honor implicit agreements, whereas selfish principals are not. Principals are privately informed about their types. We investigate a separating equilibrium in...

This paper examines "market-based tournaments", in which firms use the tournament outcome to update their expectations about worker ability. A theoretical model offers several implications, which are unique to the market-based tournament and which we test in a laboratory experiment. The...

Talented, ambitious workers (big fish) often join highly competitive organizations (big ponds), though they sometimes instead choose less competitive organizations (small ponds) offering brighter promotion prospects. Big fish exist in both types of organizations, though average worker ability is...

We investigate how the decision of workers to join a specific type of firm affects their future career opportunities. Workers can either join a very competitive firm (big pond) or a less competitive one (small pond). In a big pond, it is more difficult to advance, but the potential rewards are...