! This natural field experiment tests the effects of purely symbolic awards on volunteer retention in a public goods context. The experiment is conducted at Wikipedia, which faces declining editor retention rates, particularly among newcomers. Randomization assures that award receipt is orthogonal to previous performance. The analysis reveals that awards have a sizeable effect on newcomer reten...

We consider an anisotropic version of the CP model which describes frustrated quantum antiferromagnets with incommensurate spin correlations. We extend the two-component spinon field, describing lattice spins, to the M -component complex vector, and show, in the 1/M expansion, that for arbitrary small incommensurability longitudinal and transverse stiffnesses tend to the same value as the syste...

On the Hidden Costs of Incentive Schemes By enriching a principal-agent model it is shown that the introduction of monetary incentives may reduce an agent’s motivation. In a first step, we allow for the possibility that some agents stick to unverifiable agreements. The larger the fraction of reliable agents, the lower powered will then be the optimal incentive scheme and fixed wages become opti...

Do the contests with the largest prizes attract the most able contestants? To what extent do contestants avoid competition? In this paper, we show, theoretically and empirically, that the distribution of abilities plays a crucial role in determining contest choice. Sorting exists only when the proportion of high-ability contestants is sufficiently small. As this proportion increases, contestant...

Profit Sharing and Training We analyze the impact of profit sharing on the share of workers receiving training. An effect is plausible because: 1) profit sharing is a credible commitment by firms to reward firmspecific skills acquired by formal or informal training, 2) profit sharing may reduce turnover and increase the returns to training, 3) a common payment for the whole workforce leads to p...

After a merger, company officials face the challenge of making compensation schemes uniform and of redesigning teams with managers from companies with different incentives, work habits and recruiting methods. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between executive pay and performance after a merger by dissociating the respective influence of shifts, which occur in both compensation inc...

Inequality, Inequity Aversion, and the Provision of Public Goods We investigate the effects of inequality in wealth on the incentives to contribute to a public good when agents are inequity averse and may differ in ability. We show that equality may lead to a reduction of public good provision below levels generated by purely selfish agents. But introducing inequality motivates more productive ...

Social Incentives Matter: Evidence from an Online Real Effort Experiment Contributing to a social cause can be an important driver for workers in the public and nonprofit sector as well as in firms that engage in Corporate Social Responsibility activities. This paper compares the effectiveness of social incentives to financial incentives using an online real effort experiment. We find that soci...

Getting More Work for Nothing? Symbolic Awards and Worker Performance We study the impact of status and social recognition on worker performance in a field experiment. In collaboration with an international non-governmental organization we hired students to work on a database project. Students in the award treatment were offered a congratulatory card from the organization honoring the best perf...

The same contestants often meet repeatedly in contests. Behavior in a contest potentially provides information with regard to one’s type and can therefore in‡uence the behavior of the opponents in later contests. This paper shows that if e¤ort is observable, this can induce a ratchet e¤ect in contests: high ability contestants sometimes put in little e¤ort in an early round in order to make the...