Is everything relative? A survey of the theory of matching tournaments
综述了匹配锦标赛理论，展示社会环境影响经济决策的机制，发现竞争导致过度努力，但双方投资时可能实现社会效率。
Abstract This paper surveys the theory of matching tournaments, and shows how they can be used to understand how the social environment influences economic decision making. Matching tournaments are games in which players choose efforts or investments before entering a matching market in which attractiveness depends on these investments. This results in rat‐race‐like competition even in large populations, inducing a concern for relative position and resulting in higher effort than in the absence of competition. However, when both sides of the market invest, the result surprisingly can be socially efficient. Applications and extensions are discussed.