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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2005

Economics

Yale University

Wages

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Grading In Games Of Status: Marking Exams And Setting Wages, Pradeep Dubey, John Geanakoplos Dec 2005

Grading In Games Of Status: Marking Exams And Setting Wages, Pradeep Dubey, John Geanakoplos

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We introduce grading into games of status. Each player chooses effort, producing a stochastic output or score. Utilities depend on the ranking of all the scores. By clustering scores into grades, the ranking is coarsened, and the incentives to work are changed. We first apply games of status to grading exams. Our main conclusion is that if students care primarily about their status (relative rank) in class, they are often best motivated to work not by revealing their exact numerical exam scores (100,99,…,1), but instead by clumping them into coarse categories ( A,B,C ). When student abilities are disparate, the …


Grading In Games Of Status: Marking Exams And Setting Wages, Pradeep Dubey, John Geanakoplos Dec 2005

Grading In Games Of Status: Marking Exams And Setting Wages, Pradeep Dubey, John Geanakoplos

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We introduce grading into games of status. Each player chooses effort, producing a stochastic output or score. Utilities depend on the ranking of all the scores. By clustering scores into grades, the ranking is coarsened, and the incentives to work are changed. We first apply games of status to grading exams. Our main conclusion is that if students care primarily about their status (relative rank) in class, they are often best motivated to work not by revealing their exact numerical exam scores (100,99,…,1), but instead by clumping them into coarse categories ( A,B,C ). When student abilities are disparate, the …


Prizes Versus Wages With Envy And Pride, Pradeep Dubey, John Geanakoplos, Ori Haimanko Oct 2005

Prizes Versus Wages With Envy And Pride, Pradeep Dubey, John Geanakoplos, Ori Haimanko

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We show that if agents are risk neutral, prizes outperform wages when there is sufficient pride and envy relative to the noisiness of performance. If agents are risk averse, prizes are a necessary supplement to wages (as bonuses).