【主讲】Jaesun Lee 助教授 (同济大学)
【主题】How Competition Affect People Economically and Emotionally?
【时间】2017年11月3日 (周五) 15：30-17：00
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼701室
【语言】英文
【摘要】Competition is fostered in many domains to improve performance, but its psychological impacts on those involved -- and thus their overall utility and well-being -- have not yet received much attention in the literature. This paper investigates the effect of competitive environments on effort provision and mood by conducting a lab experiment and on that basis proposing a simple model that incorporates mood in the utility function. The paper also explores how past experiences affect people's preferences for competitive payment schemes. The results show that people exert greater effort when they work under competitive payment schemes such as piece-rate and rank-order tournament payments than fixed payments. In contrast, these competitive payment schemes, along with rank feedback, make people feel worse. In particular, people with low ranks suffer more as the working environment becomes more competitive. The findings provide evidence that competitive environments may be detrimental to some people in the left tail of the distribution. Moreover, the paper finds that expected earnings play a more important role than mood in people's preferences for incentive schemes. The study contributes to the literature by introducing the psychological impact of competitive working environments and a potential role of mood in the discussion of preferences.
