Homogenous and Heterogenous Contestants in Piece Rate Tournaments: Theory and Empirical Analysis
研究在计件制锦标赛中，将不同能力的参赛者分入更异质的组别会提高最优努力水平，从而增加委托人的收益，但福利效应不确定。基于肉鸡生产合同数据，结构估计表明异质化分组可能是有效率的。
In this paper we show that sorting different ability contestants in piece rate tournaments into more homogeneous groups alters incentives for agents to exert effort. In particular we show that for a given mean of the tournament group's ability parameters, larger variance (more heterogeneous agents) induces higher optimal effort. This implies that the principal can actually gain from heterogenizing the tournament groups. On the other hand, the effect of this change on growers' welfare is unclear because higher effort leads to higher productivity and hence higher payment, but also increases the cost of effort. Using broiler production contracts settlement data we empirically estimate a fully structural model of a piece rate tournament game with heterogeneous players. Our counterfactual analysis shows that under reasonable assumptions the integrator's gain is actually larger than the growers' losses indicating that heterogenizing groups in piece rate tournaments may be efficient.