A Comparison of Tournaments and Contracts
比较了基于排名的锦标赛与个人合同在风险中性委托人和多个风险厌恶代理人模型中的优劣，发现无共同冲击时合同更优，共同冲击分布足够分散时锦标赛更优，且代理人数量足够多时锦标赛可达到与可观察冲击的合同相同的效果。
Tournaments, reward structures based on rank order, are compared with individual contracts in a model with one risk-neutral principal and many risk-averse agents. Each agent's output is a stochastic function of his effort level plus an additive shock term that is common to all the agents. The principal observes only the output levels of the agents. It is shown that, in the absence of a common shock, using optimal independent contracts dominates using the optimal tournament. Conversely, if the distribution of the common shock is sufficiently diffuse, using the optimal tournament dominates using optimal independent contracts. Finally, it is shown that for a sufficiently large number of agents, a principal who cannot observe the common shock but uses the optimal tournament does as well as one who can observe the shock and uses independent contracts.