| By: |
Sarah Necker;
Fabian Paetzel |
| Abstract: |
Competitive rewards are often assigned on a regular basis, e.g., in annual
salary negotiations or employee-of-the-month schemes. The repetition of
competitions can imply that opponents are matched based on earlier outcomes.
Using a real-effort experiment, we examine how cheating and effort evolve in
two rounds of competitions in which subjects compete with different types of
opponents in the second round (random/based on first-round outcome). We find
that (i) losing causes competitors to increase cheating in the second round
while winning implies a tendency to reduce cheating. A similar effect is found
with regard to effort, which losers increase to a larger extent than winners.
(ii) Competitor matching does not significantly affect behavior. |
| Keywords: |
cheating, effort, competition, competitor, social recognition, laboratory experiment |
| JEL: |
C91 C92 M52 J28 J33 |
| Date: |
2022 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9744&r= |