This paper considers a two-stage game with two owners and two managers. On the first stage, the owners choose a linear combination of profits and sales as incentives for their managers. On the second stage, the two managers compete in a tournament against each other. In a symmetric equilibrium,...

In a contest players compete for winning a prize by effort and thereby increasing their probability of winning. Contestants, however, could also improve their own relative position by harming the other players. We experimentally analyze contests with heterogeneous agents who may individually...

It is well-known that, in static models, minimum wages generate positive worker rents and, consequently, ine?ciently low effort. We show that this result does not necessarily extend to a dynamic context. The reason is that, in repeated employment relationships, ?rms may exploit workers’ future...

According to New Institutional Economics, two or more individuals will found an organization, if it leads to a benefit compared to market allocation. A natural consequence will then be internal rent seeking. We discuss the interrelation between profits, rent seeking and the foundation of...

We introduce a concept of emotions that emerge when workers compare their own performance with a given standard or with the performances of co-workers. Assuming heterogeneity among the workers the interplay of emotions and incentives is analysed by focusing on three incentive schemes that are...

Dem Plan des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung bis zu zehn "Spitzenuniversitäten" zu fördern, um den Wissenschaftsstandort Deutschland nachhaltig zu stärken, steht Prof. Dr. Gerd Grözinger, Universität Flensburg, eher skeptisch gegenüber. Für ihn wäre es wichtiger, die...

A two-stage, two-person tournament is discussed, in which each player can influence the other one at the first stage by choosing help, sabotage or no action. At the second stage, the players choose effort to win the tournament. Helping and sabotaging have two effects — they influence the...

It is well-known that, in static models, minimum wages generate positive worker rents and, consequently, inefficiently low e?ort. We show that this result does not necessarily extend to a dynamic context. The reason is that, in repeated employment relationships, ?rms may exploit workers’...

This paper examines a principal’s trade-off when he decides whether to transfer knowledge to other members of the organization. Although knowledge makes an agent more productive (productivity effect), knowledge transfer could cause the agent to become selfemployed. The agent would then become...

This paper extends the discussion of simultaneous-move tournaments by focusing on the analysis of heterogeneous instead of homogeneous contestants. We show that the principal will not implement first-best efforts even though the agents are risk neutral and not limited in wealth, and despite the...