Do Europeans Shy Away from Competition? Types of Contestants and the Structure of Tournaments

33 Pages Posted: 5 Oct 2007

Date Written: October 5, 2007

Abstract

For a large European data set, we find that in about 21% of all cases, cross-hierarchy pay schedules are inconsistent with tournament theory for managers from the highest echelons. For middle echelons, this number increases to 55%. We study whether social preferences of potential contestants give rise to low implementation rates of powerful organizational incentive schemes. Our results are affirmative. We show that the more individuals are inequity and competition averse, (i) the lower is the spread of managerial pay between echelons, and (ii) the smaller are the incentive effects generated by tournaments. Our evidence, however, is inconsistent with the hypothesis that pay dispersion is lower if individuals are more hawkish, or less trustworthy.

Keywords: pay dispersion, pay inequality, managerial pay dispersion, pay inequality, managerial

Suggested Citation

Brenner, Steffen, Do Europeans Shy Away from Competition? Types of Contestants and the Structure of Tournaments (October 5, 2007). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1019444 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1019444

Steffen Brenner (Contact Author)

Copenhagen Business School

Solbjerg Plads 3
Frederiksberg C, DK - 2000
Denmark

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
120
Abstract Views
852
Rank
417,769
PlumX Metrics