Investment Tournaments: When Should a Rational Agent Put All Eggs in One Basket?
研究投资锦标赛中，决策者如何在多个价值受冲击的备选方案间逐步分配投资，发现多数情况下最优策略是每期将所有资源投入最有希望的方案，并揭示晋升锦标赛中工人早期努力更高的原因。
We study "investment tournaments, " a class of decisionproblems involving gradual allocation of investment among severalalternatives whose values are subject to shocks. The decision maker'spayoff is determined by the final values of the alternatives. An important example of such tournaments is the career choice problem, since a person typically starts by investing in learning several professions.We show that in many cases it is optimal for the decision maker to allocate all resources to the most promising alternative in each time period. We also show that in promotion tournaments the workers optimally exert higher efforts at an early stage in order to capture a larger share of employer's investment, such as mentoring. (c) 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.