At the firm level, productivity is constantly evolving because of the introduction of new technology and innovations. Some of these productivity gains diffuse uniformly across firms, while others only spread out in the industry with time. The unequal evolution of productivity impacts the structure of the industry, the more the greater the degree of competition. We analyze the relationship between the distribution of firms’ productivity advantages and the distribution of market shares and show that this relationship is more intense with more competition. We briefly comment on two applications: we show that because productivity gains, market concentration and inflation can be negatively related, and we give an alternative interpretation to the case for a recent rise of US markups attributed to increased market power.

Using public goods games in a laboratory setting, we study team-level production, where two teams compete for the resources of a common-member who can benefit from and provide effort in both teams. Intrinsically, the common-member faces divided loyalties. We examine such competition in a setting in which the common-member has productive abilities equal to that of the other team members (dedicated-members), and in two settings where he/she has greater relative potential. When effort (contributions) by the common-member have greater productivity (coupled with higher opportunity costs to contribute) in providing the public good relative to that of dedicated-members, we find team performance is not significantly increased. On the other hand, when the common-member has a greater endowment, sufficient to match the absolute contributions of team members in both teams, there is a significant increase in team performance. The evidence suggests that a norm of reciprocity by dedicated-members based on absolute contributions of the common-member better explains behavior than a norm based on the value added of the common-member's contributions. This behavior, along with fairness norms elicited in a survey, suggests that on average dedicated members do not sufficiently incorporate the common-members' higher opportunity costs in the treatment where his/her productivity is increased. This setting provides an important illustration of where the behavioral response to the type of inequality matters, leading to differences in team efficiency.

Mounting geoeconomic competition between the United States (US) and China alongside the global shocks due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war have drawn significant attention to the instability and vulnerability issues in the global supply chain (GSC), which is critical for international trade, production, and economic security. Can the US, South Korea, and Japan successfully coordinate their efforts to establish a secure and resilient GSC in key industries? Can these efforts promote economic security? By defining the efforts to reshape the GSC as part of the US–China power competition, this study evaluates the impact of its restructuring around the US on various aspects of the economic and national security of South Korea and Japan. Overall, the findings highlight that restructuring the GSC poses complex challenges for South Korea and its foreign policy in the contemporary globalization era.

The autochthonous Lipoptena cervi and the allochthonous Lipoptena fortisetosa in Cervus elaphus in Central/Northern Italy were studied during autumn and winter 2018–2020 in order to evaluate the possible interactions between the two parasite species and the possible influence of geographical parameters on their abundance. This survey could help disentangling whether the coexistence between the two species will be possible or the competitive exclusion of L. cervi is to be expected. The results show that L. cervi is influenced by host sex and age and is more abundant at higher altitudes, while L. fortisetosa is more abundant in lower altitudes and in southern/eastern areas. The interaction between the two species is evident and symmetrical but mild at the component community level, while at the infracommunity level an asymmetric competition has been evidenced by the displacement of L. cervi when L. fortisetosa is present in the same body location. Geographical clusters of L. fortisetosa are evident in plains near urbanized areas, while L. cervi distribution appeared more scattered in all the Apennine ridge. Our observations indicate that the two deer ked species not only can coinfect the same host population but also the same host individual, avoiding strong direct interaction and competitive exclusion. All the observed patterns reflect different adaptations to environmental conditions and possible strategies to minimize competition. However, longitudinal surveys are needed to evaluate if the observed pattern is a constant feature or a result of the sampling seasons.

We investigate whether piece-rate and competitive incentives affect creativity, and if so, how the incentive effect depends on the form of the incentives. We find that while both piece-rate and competitive incentives lead to greater effort relative to a base-line with no incentives, neither type of incentives improve creativity relative to the base-line. More interestingly, we find that competitive incentives are in fact counter-productive in that they reduce creativity relative to base-line condition. In line with previous literature, we find that competitive conditions affect men and women differently: whereas women perform worse under competition than the base-line condition, men do not.

There is a heated debate on whether markets erode social responsibility and moral behavior. However, it is a challenging task to identify and measure moral behavior in markets. Based on a theoretical model, we examine in an experiment the relation between trading volume, prices and moral behavior by setting up markets that either impose a negative externality on third parties or not. We find that moral behavior reveals itself in lower trading volume in markets with a negative externality, while prices mostly depend on the market structure. We further investigate individual characteristics that explain trading behavior in markets with negative externalities.

Public reputation mechanisms are an effective means to limit opportunistic behavior in markets suffering from moral hazard problems. While previous research was mostly concerned with the influence of exogenous feedback mechanisms, this study considers the endogenous emergence of reputation through deliberate information sharing among actors and the role of barriers in hindering information exchange. Using a repeated investment game, we analyze the effects of competition and transfer costs on players’ willingness to share information with each other. While transfer costs are a direct cost of the information exchange, competition costs represent an indirect cost that arises when the transfer of valuable information to competitors comes at the loss of a competitive advantage. We show that barriers to information exchange not only affect the behavior of the senders of information, but also affect the ones about whom the information is shared. While the possibility of sharing information about others significantly improves trust and market efficiency, both competition and direct transfer costs diminish the positive effect by substantially reducing the level of information exchange. Players about whom the information is shared anticipate and react to the changes in the costs by behaving more or less cooperatively. For reputation building, an environment is needed that fosters the sharing of information. Reciprocity is key to understanding information exchange. Even when it is costly, information sharing is used as a way to sanction others.

Charness and Dufwenberg (Am. Econ. Rev. 101(4):1211–1237, 2011) have recently demonstrated that cheap-talk communication raises efficiency in bilateral contracting situations with adverse selection. We replicate their main finding and extend their design to include competition between agents. We find that communication and competition act as “substitutes:” communication raises efficiency in the absence of competition but not with competition, and competition raises efficiency without communication but lowers efficiency with communication. We briefly review some behavioral theories that have been proposed in this context and show that each can explain some but not all features of the observed data patterns. Our findings highlight the fragility of cheap-talk communication and may serve as a guide to refine existing behavioral theories.

We devise an experiment to explore the effect of different degrees of bargaining power on the design and the selection of contracts in a hidden-information context. In our benchmark case, each principal is matched with one agent of unknown type. In our second treatment, a principal can select one of three agents, while in a third treatment an agent may choose between the contract menus offered by two principals. We first show theoretically how different ratios of principals and agents affect outcomes and efficiency. Informational asymmetries generate inefficiency. In an environment where principals compete against each other to hire agents, these inefficiencies may disappear, but they are insensitive to the number of principals. In contrast, when agents compete to be hired, efficiency improves dramatically, and it increases in the relative number of agents because competition reduces the agents’ informational monopoly power. However, this environment also generates a high inequality level and is characterized by multiple equilibria. In general, there is a fairly high degree of correspondence between the theoretical predictions and the contract menus actually chosen in each treatment. There is, however, a tendency to choose more ‘generous’ (and more efficient) contract menus over time. We find that competition leads to a substantially higher probability of trade, and that, overall, competition between agents generates the most efficient outcomes.

Demands in the Ultimatum Game in its traditional form with one proposer and one responder are compared with demands in an Ultimatum Game with responder competition. In this modified form one proposer faces three responders who can accept or reject the split of the pie. Initial demands in both ultimatum games are quite similar, however in the course of the experiment, demands in the ultimatum game with responder competition are significantly higher than in the traditional case with repeated random matching. Individual round-to-round changes of choices that are consistent with directional learning are the driving forces behind the differences between the two learning curves and cannot be tracked by an adjustment process in response to accumulated reinforcements. The importance of combining reinforcement and directional learning is addressed. Moreover, learning transfer between the two ultimatum games is analyzed.

Competition involves two main dimensions, a rivalry for resources and the ranking of relative performance. If socially recognized, the latter yields a ranking in terms of social status. The rivalry for resources resulting from competitive incentives has been found to negatively affect women’s performance relative to that of men. However, little is known about gender differences in the performance consequences of social-status ranking. In our experiments we introduce a novel design that allows us to isolate the effects of status ranking from those caused by a rivalry for resources. Subjects do a time-limited task where they need to search for numbers and add them up. Performance is straightforwardly measured by the number of correct summations. When there is no status ranking we find no gender differences in the number of attempted summations or in performance. By contrast, when there is status ranking men significantly increase the number of attempted summations as well as the number of correct summations. Remarkably, when women are subjected to status ranking, they significantly decrease the number of attempted summations. The net result is striking. With status ranking men attempt more summations and correctly solve many more than women. These differences are markedly large and statistically highly significant. Our results suggest that increased participation in competitive environments could harm women’s labor market success along a hidden channel.

Members of organizations are often called upon to trust others and to reciprocate trust while at the same time competing for bonuses or promotions. We suggest that competition affects trust not only within dyads including direct competitors, but also between individuals who do not compete against each other. We test this idea in a trust game where trustors and trustees are rewarded based either on their absolute performance or on how well they do relative to players from other dyads. In Experiment 1, we show that competition among trustors significantly increases trust. Competition among trustees decreases trustworthiness, but trustors do not anticipate this effect. In Experiment 2, we additionally show that the increase in trust under competition is caused by a combination of increased risk taking and lower sensitivity to non-financial concerns specific to trust interactions. Our results suggest that tournament incentives might have a “blinding effect” on considerations such as betrayal and inequality aversion.

In an experiment using two-bidder first-price sealed bid auctions with symmetric independent private values and 400 subjects, we scan also the right hand of each subject. We study how the ratio of the length of the index and ring fingers (2D:4D) of the right hand, a measure of prenatal hormone exposure, is correlated with bidding behavior and total profits. 2D:4D has been reported to predict competitiveness in sports competition (Manning and Taylor in Evol. Hum. Behav. 22:61–69, 2001, and Hönekopp et al. in Horm. Behav. 49:545–549, 2006), risk aversion in lottery tasks (Dreber and Hoffman in Portfolio selection in utero. Stockholm School of Economics, 2007; Garbarino et al. in J. Risk Uncertain. 42:1–26, 2011), and the average profitability of high-frequency traders in financial markets (Coates et al. in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 106:623–628, 2009). We do not find any significant correlation between 2D:4D on either bidding or profits. However, there might be racial differences in the correlation between 2D:4D and bidding and profits.

This paper is the first experimental study of the effects of competition and adverse selection on the performance of market maker (MM-) markets. Information distribution may is either symmetric or heterogeneous. MM-markets are either monopolistic (the specialist markets), or competitive (the multi MM-market). Welfare comparisons are with respect to a continuous double auction (DA-) market. Informed subjects receive an imperfect signal of the true state of the world. We find three main results. First, competition among market makers significantly reduces the bid-ask spread, and increases transaction volume. Second, competition among market makers induces competitive undercutting, yielding net trading losses for market makers as a group in most periods. Third, from the perspective of uninformed traders, a competing MM-regime is optimal, since it minimizes their expected trading losses.

Non-monetary rewards are frequently used to promote pro-social behaviors, and these behaviors often result in approval from one’s peers. Nevertheless, we know little about how peer-approval, and particularly competition for peer-approval, influences people’s decisions to cooperate. This paper provides experimental evidence suggesting that people in peer-approval competitions value social approval more when it leads to unique and durable rewards. Our evidence suggests that such rewards act as a signaling mechanism, thereby contributing to the value of approval. We show that this signaling mechanism generates cooperation at least as effectively as cash rewards. Our findings point to the potential value of developing new mechanisms that rely on small non-monetary rewards to promote generosity in groups.

Individual willingness to enter competitive environments predicts career choices and labor market outcomes. Meanwhile, many people experience competitive contexts as stressful. We use two laboratory experiments to investigate whether factors related to stress can help explain individual differences in tournament entry. Experiment 1 studies whether stress responses (measured as salivary cortisol) to taking part in a mandatory tournament predict individual willingness to participate in a voluntary tournament. We find that competing increases stress levels. This cortisol response does not predict tournament entry for men but is positively and significantly correlated with choosing to enter the tournament for women. In Experiment 2, we exogenously induce physiological stress using the cold-pressor task. We find a positive causal effect of stress on tournament entry for women but no effect for men. Finally, we show that although the effect of stress on tournament entry differs between the genders, stress reactions cannot explain the well-documented gender difference in willingness to compete.

We study price efficiency and trading behavior in laboratory limit order markets with asymmetrically informed traders. Markets differ in the number of insiders present and in the subset of traders who receive information about the number of insiders present. We observe that price efficiency (i) is the higher the higher the number of insiders in the market but (ii) is unaffected by changes in the subset of traders who know about the number of insiders present. (iii) Independent of the number of insiders, price efficiency increases gradually over time. (iv) The insiders’ information is reflected in prices via limit (market) orders if the asset’s value is inside (outside) the bid-ask spread. (v) In situations where limit and market orders yield positive profits, insiders clearly prefer market orders, indicating a strong desire for immediate transactions.

Knowledge of the critical periods of crop–weed competition is crucial for designing weed management strategies in cropping systems. In the Lower Yangtze Valley, China, field experiments were conducted in 2011 and 2012 to study the effect of interference from mixed natural weed populations on cotton growth and yield and to determine the critical period for weed control (CPWC) in direct-seeded cotton. Two treatments were applied: allowing weeds to infest the crop or keeping plots weed-free for increasing periods (0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, and 20 wk) after crop emergence. The results show that mixed natural weed infestations led to 35- to 55-cm shorter cotton plants with stem diameters 10 to 13 mm smaller throughout the season, fitting well with modified Gompertz and logistic models, respectively. Season-long competition with weeds reduced the number of fruit branches per plant by 65% to 82%, decreasing boll number per plant by 86% to 96% and single boll weight by approximately 24%. Weed-free seed cotton yields ranged from 2,900 to 3,130 kg ha−1, while yield loss increased with the duration of weed infestation, reaching up to 83% to 96% compared with permanent weed-free plots. Modified Gompertz and logistic models were used to analyze the impact of increasing weed control duration and weed interference on relative seed cotton yield (percentage of season-long weed-free cotton), respectively. Based on a 5% yield loss threshold, the CPWC was found to be from 145 to 994 growing degree days (GDD), corresponding to 14 to 85 d after emergence (DAE). These findings emphasize the importance of implementing effective weed control measures from 14 to 85 DAE in the Lower Yangtze Valley to prevent crop losses exceeding a 5% yield loss threshold.