We study how the presence of promotion competition in the labor market affects household specialization patterns. By embedding a promotion tournament model in a household setting, we show that specialization can emerge as a consequence of competitive work incentives. This specialization outcome,...

We provide a new theory to explain why firms multitask workers rather than specializing them. Workers over-perform in tasks they like and under-perform in tasks they dislike, to favorably influence future job assignments. Anticipating this, firms may find it optimal to commit to future...

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...

Players often engage in high-profile public communications to demonstrate their confidence of winning before they carry out actual competitive activities. This paper investigates players' incentives to conduct such pre-contest communication. We assume that a player suffers a cost when he sends a...

We develop a general framework to study contests, containing the well-known models of Tullock (1980) and Lazear & Rosen (1981) as special cases. The contest outcome depends on players' effort and skill, the latter being subject to symmetric uncertainty. The model is tractable, because a...

We develop a general framework for studying contests, including the well-known models of Tullock (1980) and Lazear & Rosen (1981) as special cases. The contest outcome depends on players' efforts and skills, the latter being subject to symmetric uncertainty. The model is tractable, because a...

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...