Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Asymmetric Shocks in Contests: Theory and Experiment

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。该奖项资助的研究将联合收割机经济理论和实验室实验相结合，以调查随机冲击的分布如何影响排名锦标赛参与者的努力规定。在排名顺序锦标赛中，一个人的竞争输出等于她或他所付出的努力，加上随机冲击。由于其流行，锦标赛已经收到了大量的学术关注。其他研究假设随机冲击的分布是对称的。 然而，一些真实的世界锦标赛包括非对称冲击。例如，在像奥运会这样的精英比赛中，运动员付出了大量的努力。他们的分数通常集中在可能表现的边界附近。因此，运动员不可能面临非常积极的冲击，然而，运动员遭受非常消极的冲击的可能性很小。本计画将结合联合收割机理论与实验，比较不同冲击分布下锦标赛的努力规定。研究设计将允许研究人员直接测量锦标赛参与者的努力，并比较不同类型的冲击下的激励效果。这项研究的结果可以提高对随机冲击分布为什么以及如何影响竞争环境中努力提供的理解， 当非常糟糕的结果不太可能但可能发生时，人们会做出决定。2本项目使用理论和实验的方法来比较在不同冲击分布下的等级顺序锦标赛中的努力规定。理论发现，在最优委托代理合同下，锦标赛参与者的努力应该不受冲击分布的影响。然而，这一结果从未得到验证，因为所有现有的经验和实验文献都集中在激波分布对称的环境中。在方法上，采用不同的冲击分布的治疗的努力选择实验。在那个实验中，玩家选择了他们想要付出的努力后，计算机就会为每个玩家随机抽取一个电击。玩家的输出是他或她选择的努力，加上计算机选择的随机冲击。该实验设计直接测量玩家的努力，并允许比较不同冲击的激励效果。这个项目将扩展和通知当前的文献，通过阐明冲击分布的形状对锦标赛参与者的努力决策的影响。该项目的结果将进一步促进人们更好地了解当非常糟糕的结果不太可能但可能发生时人们如何做出决策。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This award funds research that will combine economic theory and laboratory experiments to investigate how the distributions of random shocks affects the effort provisions of rank-tournament participants. In rank-order tournaments, an individual’s competitive output equals the effort she or he exerts, plus a random shock. Because of their prevalence, tournaments have received a great deal of scholarly attention. Other research has assumed that the distribution of the random shock is symmetric. However, some real world tournaments include asymmetric shocks. For example, in elite competitions like the Olympics athletes exert significant amounts of effort. Their scores typically cluster near the boundary of possible performance. Consequently, there is no chance that an athlete will face an extremely positive shock, however, there is a small chance that an athlete will suffer an extremely negative shock. This project will combine theory and experiment to compare effort provisions in tournaments under different shock distributions. The research design will allow the researchers to directly measure tournament participant’s effort and compare the incentive effects under different types of shocks. The findings of this research could develop an improved understanding of why and how the distributions of random shocks affect effort provision in competitive environments, shedding new light on how people make decisions when very bad outcomes are unlikely but possible.This project uses theoretical and experimental methods to compare effort provisions in rank- order tournaments under different shock distributions. Theory finds that, under optimal principal-agent contracts, the effort exerted by tournament participants should be invariant to the shock distribution. However, this result has never been tested, as all existing empirical and experimental literature focuses on environments where the shock distribution is symmetric.This project fills this gap. Methodologically, an effort-choice experiment is employed with treatments that differ in shock distributions. In that experiment, after players choose the effort they would like to exert, the computer then draws a random shock, independently for each player. A player’s output is the effort she or he chooses, plus the random shock chosen by the computer. This experimental design directly measures a player’s effort and allows for the comparison of the incentive effects of different shocks. This project will extend and inform the current literature by shedding light on the influence of the shape of the shock distribution on a tournament participant’s effort decisions. The results of this project will further facilitate a better understanding of how people make decisions when very bad outcomes are unlikely but possible.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.