Competitive burnout: Theory and experimental evidence

Amegashie, J. Atsu; Cadsby, Charles Bram; Song, Yang

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2006.08.009

Cited by 44 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…For example, in Benoit (1999), members of socioeconomically disadvantaged groups and members of other groups must decide-after learning about their ability-whether or not to invest, say, in prep courses for the SAT test. Benoit finds that if there is no affirmative action, then members of the disadvantaged group might drop out by not investing (for a different setup see Amegashie 2004 andAmegashie, Cadsby, andSong 2007). Prendergast (1999) suggests that such dropout behavior can be seen in sports contests.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Workaholics and Dropouts in Organizations

Müller

Schotter

2010

Journal of the European Economic Association

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This paper reports the results of experiments designed to test the theory of the optimal composition of prizes in contests. In the aggregate the behavior of subjects is consistent with that predicted by the theory, but we find that such aggregate results mask an unexpected compositional effect on the individual level. Whereas theory predicts that subject efforts are continuous and increasing functions of ability, the actual efforts of our laboratory subjects bifurcate. Lowability workers drop out and exert little or no effort, and high-ability workers try too hard. This bifurcation, which is masked by aggregation, can be explained by assuming loss aversion on the part of the subjects. (JEL: C92, D44, D72, D82, J31) for helpful comments, as well as Maher Said for valuable research assistance. Thanks are also due to seminar participants at Bonn, Copenhagen, Erfurt, Humboldt University Berlin, Rotterdam, and Tilburg.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Workaholics and Dropouts in Organizations

Müller

Schotter

2010

Journal of the European Economic Association

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“…Ferrall and Smith (1999) use playoff series data from professional baseball, basketball, and hockey and find that teams do not strategically allocate their effort and play as well as they can regardless of their standing in the series. Amegashie et al (2007) demonstrate a related effect experimentally: in a two‐stage contest with elimination, players “burn out” by using all their resources in the first stage. The other group of results favors the hypothesis that players allocate their effort strategically across time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Static and dynamic contests have been analyzed experimentally by a number of researchers (e.g., Davis and Reilly, 1998; Anderson and Stafford, 2003; Önçüler and Croson, 2004; Schmitt et al, 2004; Amaldoss and Rapoport, 2005; Amegashie et al, 2007). Most studies find significant overdissipation of effort in comparison with the equilibrium predictions 2 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fatigue in Dynamic Tournaments

Ryvkin¹

2011

Journal of Economics &Amp; Management Strategy

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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.

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“…Several works in the literature deal with multistage contests with budget constraints (see, for example, Amegashie, Cadsby, and Song 2007, Matros 2006, and Harbaugh and Klumpp 2005). These models are different than multistage contests with bid caps, since in multistage contests with budget constraints a player faces a single constraint on his total bid, while in multistage contests with bid caps a player may face a different bid constraint in each stage of the contest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caps in Sequential Contests

Megidish¹,

Sela²

2013

Economic Inquiry

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We study a sequential two‐stage all‐pay auction with two identical prizes. In each stage, the players compete for one prize and each player can win either one or two prizes. The designer may impose a cap on the players' bids in each of the stages. We analyze the equilibrium in this sequential all‐pay auction with bid caps and show that capping the players' bids is profitable for a designer who wishes to maximize the players' expected total bid. (JEL D44, D82, J31, J41)

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Competitive burnout: Theory and experimental evidence

Cited by 44 publications

References 30 publications

Workaholics and Dropouts in Organizations

Workaholics and Dropouts in Organizations

Fatigue in Dynamic Tournaments

Caps in Sequential Contests

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