Fatigue in Dynamic Tournaments

Employee overwork and fatigue are a concern of managers in many organizations, as they may increase health and safety risks and decrease productivity. The problem is especially severe in competitive environments, where compensation and promotions are awarded, explicitly or implicitly, on the basis of relative performance. We propose a theory for, and study experimentally, the phenomenon of fatigue in a dynamic competitive environment. We find that subjects react strongly to changes in the environment related to fatigue and follow the comparative statics of equilibrium predictions. At the same time, within a given environment, subjects behave as if they are unaware of the deteriorating effect of fatigue on their competitiveness.     

The Credibility of Performance Feedback in Tournaments

This paper studies the effect of performance feedback on tournament outcomes, when a possibly dishonest principal may manipulate the agents' expectations to stimulate their effort. Under plausible circumstances, an increase in the principal's propensity to tell the truth (i.e., integrity) induces a mean preserving spread in the distribution of effort and leads to a decrease in expected profits and welfare. More generally, I identify conditions under which a lower integrity can improve the effectiveness of financial incentives in inducing the agents' effort, thus leading to higher expected profits for the principal.     

Feedback in Tournaments under Commitment Problems: Experimental Evidence

We theoretically as well as experimentally analyze tournaments in which one of the agents leads over the other before entering the tournament, that is, in which one of the competitors benefits from a head start. The principal may decide upon informing the agents about the degree of this asymmetry. She cannot commit to giving feedback ex ante or not and, thus, chooses the strategy that is optimal for her ex post. In equilibrium, the principal reveals information if the asymmetry is not too large. Our experimental findings qualitatively confirm our theoretical prediction. Moreover, behavior of the principal and the agents is well aligned to each other.     

Dynamic Incentives and Agent Discrimination in Broiler Production Tournaments

The objective of this paper is to test whether broiler processors, after observing their contract growers' abilities in the sequences of repeated short-term contracts, strategically allocate production inputs of varying quality. The strategy can either consist of providing high-ability agents with high-quality inputs or providing low-ability agents with high-quality inputs. The first strategy would stimulate the career concerns type of response on the part of the growers, whereas the second strategy would generate a ratchet effect. We test these hypotheses by using the broiler contract production data. The results show no significant input discrimination based on grower abilities that would lead to either career concerns or ratchet effect type of dynamic incentives.     

Envy and Compassion in Tournaments

Many experiments and field studies indicate that most individuals are not purely motivated by material self-interest but also care about the well being of others. In this paper, we examine tournaments among inequity averse agents, who dislike disadvantageous inequity (envy) and advantageous inequity (compassion). It turns out that inequity averse agents exert higher efforts than purely self-interested agents for a given prize structure. Contrary to standard tournament theory, first-best efforts cannot be implemented when prizes are endogenous. Furthermore, the choice between vertical and lateral promotions is examined and it is shown that inequity costs have to be traded off against losses in human capital .     

Career Tournaments

This paper studies a model of career concerns where (besides agents having different ability levels) principals are heterogeneous. Two types of heterogeneity are considered: principals can differ in their productivities, and in the visibility of the agents working for them. Productivity differences result in convex wage profiles and generate assortative matching between principals and agents. Visibility differences, on the other hand, affect the mobility and career prospects of agents, and can generate nonassortative matching. We characterize the equilibrium in this market, derive implications for the behavior of agents, and examine the incentives to invest in increasing productivity and visibility.     

改进的动态反馈负载均衡算法

本文提出了一种改进的动态反馈负载均衡算法,在负载均衡过程中既考虑后台服务器的当前负载,又考虑后台服务器的处理能力,根据每台服务器当前负载比例值的大小合理分配用户请求,进而调整服务器间处理请求的比例,避免服务器超载时依然收到大量的请求,使平均应答时延和吞吐量等获得较好的性能,集群的整体性能得到提高。     

Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay

We analyze the optimal combination of promotion tournaments and linear individual performance pay in an employment relationship. An agent's effort is nonobservable and he has private information about his suitability for promotion. Thus, the two incentive schemes need to be combined to serve both incentive and selection purposes. If harder working agents respond less to intensified effort incentives, we find that the principal puts less emphasis on individual performance pay when selection becomes more important. Thus, we provide a possible explanation as to why, in practice, individual performance pay is less prevalent than promotion‐based incentives.     

一种INSS动态反馈负载均衡算法

负载均衡策略是智能网络存储系统(INSS)的关键性技术之一。本文介绍了智能网络存储系统的存储结构,提出了一种新的负载均衡算法。该算法采用周期动态反馈原理,以节点的最小化负载方差为目标,动态调整节点分配权值,最后引入随机概率的转发模式。在实验室搭建的系统平台上,对该算法以及WRR和WLC两种负载均衡算法进行了对比测试,试验结果表明该算法性能更优。     

Allocating Ideas: Horizontal Competition in Tournaments

We develop a stylized model of horizontal and vertical competition in tournaments with two competing firms. The sponsor cares not only about the quality of the design but also about the design location. A priori not even the sponsor knows his preferred design location, which is only discovered once he has seen the actual proposals. We show that the more efficient firm is more likely to be conservative when choosing the design location. Also, to get some differentiation in design locations, the cost difference between contestants can be neither too small nor too big. Therefore, if the sponsor mainly cares about the design location, participation in the tournaments by the two lowest-cost contestants cannot be optimal for the sponsor.     

Selection Tournaments, Sabotage, and Participation

This paper studies sabotage in tournaments with at least three contestants, where the contestants know each other well. Every contestant has an incentive to direct sabotage specifically against his most dangerous rival. In equilibrium, contestants who choose a higher productive effort are sabotaged more heavily. This might explain findings from psychology, where victims of mobbing are sometimes found to be overachieving. Moreover, sabotage equalizes promotion chances. The effect is most pronounced if the production functions are linear in sabotage, and the cost functions depend only on the sum of all sabotage activities: in an interior equilibrium, who will win is a matter of chance, even when contestants differ a great deal in their abilities. This, in turn, has adverse consequences for who might want to participate in a tournament. Because better contestants anticipate that they will be sabotaged more strongly, it may happen that the most able stay out and the tournament selects one of the less able with probability one. I also study the case where some contestants are easy victims, that is, easier to sabotage than others.     

Principal‐agent and Peer Relationships in Tournaments

Effort provision in tournaments may depend on both social preferences towards the competitor and social preferences towards the principal who designed the tournament. In a laboratory experiment, we analyze agents' behavior in different tournament settings that vary the distribution of the prize between agents. The principal chooses between a low and a high guaranteed payment. Standard economic theory predicts the same effort provision in all situations. Instead, our results show that both the generosity of the principal and the strict separation between winner and loser increase the effort level in tournaments. Moreover, agents focus their preferences either on the principal or on the agent. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of Intermediate Information on Sabotage in Tournaments with Heterogeneous Contestants

Applying detailed within‐tournament information about intermediate scores and contestants' ability in rank‐order professional soccer tournaments, this study empirically analyzes the impact of interim results on the sabotage activities of heterogeneous contestants. Intermediate information that suggests that a contest is decided early decreases total sabotage. Splitting contestants into favorites and underdogs reveals that both contestants sabotage the most if intermediate information about the score compensates for or decreases ex ante heterogeneity between the teams. However, engaging in sabotage does not pay off for the contestants. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

媒介物与员工激励

本文在对现有媒介最大化主要文献回顾的基础上,对市场环境和组织管理环境下的媒介物种类、媒介物的特征、媒介物作用对象的差异进行深入分析。深入探讨了组织管理领域媒介物影响个体行为的可能机制。本文认为,组织管理领域对组织成员的行为影响可能与个体需要的满足、目标引导、能力显示等作用机制有关,通过这些作用可改变个体的“努力→结果”之间的关系,发生组织管理领域“媒介最大化”现象。本文的观点为未来实证考察组织管理情境下媒介物对员工行为的作用提供了参考,并有利于丰富媒介最大化理论。     

Introduction to the Symposium on Tournaments,Contests, and Relative Performance Evaluation

The papers in this symposium reflect several of the directions taken by current research on tournaments, contests and relative performance evaluation. The papers help us understand the implications of agent heterogeneity on the incentives of agents to perform or self‐select the offers designed for them. They encompass various issues such as career concerns and promotion incentives, interim disclosure of information obtained by the principal about agent performance, exposure to risk choices, and competing for talent.     

读者来信

十年十年前的11月11日,中国通过加入世贸组织拥抱了整个世界。这一次拥抱带给我们的不仅仅是一连串的数据,更多的是体现在我们衣、食、住、行方面翻天覆地的变化。十年前"楼上楼下,电灯电话"只是一句口号,十年后的今天,手机几乎是人手一部;十年前汽车是资本家、暴发户的象     

读者来信

期待中的人参读了贵刊封面故事《人参产业的前世今生》,深有感触。作为一个从人参之乡走出的读者,感到一丝欣慰。一方水土养育一方人。从小目睹了人参产业发展的起起落落,对于人参似乎有独特的感情。抚松享有得天独厚的地理条件,长白山森林丰富的物产资源给老百姓创造了赖以生存的自然环境,这其中最能体现价值的就是人参了。     

Tournaments and piece rates revisited: a theoretical and experimental study of output-dependent prize tournaments

Tournaments represent an increasingly important component of organizational compensation systems. While prior research focused on fixed-prize tournaments where the prize to be awarded is set in advance, we introduce ‘output-dependent prizes’ where the tournament prize is endogenously determined by agents’ output—it is high when the output is high and low when the output is low. We show that tournaments with output-dependent prizes outperform fixed-prize tournaments and piece rates. A multi-agent experiment supports the theoretical result.     

Motivation Crowding Theory

The Motivation Crowding Effect suggests that external intervention via monetary incentives or punishments may undermine, and under different identifiable conditions strengthen, intrinsic motivation. As of today, the theoretical possibility of motivation crowding has been the main subject of discussion among economists. This study demonstrates that the effect is also of empirical relevance . There exist a large number of studies, offering empirical evidence in support of the existence of crowding–out and crowding–in. The study is based on circumstantial evidence, laboratory studies by both psychologists and economists, as well as field research by econometric studies. The pieces of evidence presented refer to a wide variety of areas of the economy and society and have been collected for many different countries and periods of time. Crowding effects thus are an empirically relevant phenomenon, which can, in specific cases, even dominate the traditional relative price effect.     

策人三诀

社会发展与进步，“人”是最核心的要素，“以人为本”的思想突出了重视人、关爱人的“人本精神”。古往今来，所有优秀的政治家、军事家和企业家，无不懂得“得人者昌，失人者亡”的道理，从而演绎出一幕幕以史为鉴的故事。然而在不同环境和条件下，“人本”策略是不一样的。本文仅以“适”、“恩”、“恕”，即所谓的“策人三诀”以飨读者。