[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jcecon/v48y2020i1p182-197.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A model of tournament incentives with corruption

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Bin
  • Zheng, Yu
Abstract
The institution that has enabled decades of rapid economic growth in China features lower-level government officials competing for promotion to a higher level by promoting local economic growth. Theoretically, this tournament-style promotion scheme calls for a convex wage scale to effectively elicit effort. However, the empirically observed public-sector pay scale is rather concave in China. We reconcile the theoretical prediction on the wage progressivity with its empirical counterpart by recognizing other implicit forms of incentives of rising to the top made possible by another institutional feature of China: the top-down disciplinary inspection.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Bin & Zheng, Yu, 2020. "A model of tournament incentives with corruption," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 182-197.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:48:y:2020:i:1:p:182-197
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2019.09.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596719300873
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jce.2019.09.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Tirole, Jean, 1994. "The Internal Organization of Government," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 1-29, January.
    3. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1997. "A Theory of Misgovernance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1289-1332.
    4. Gary S. Becker & George J. Stigler, 1974. "Law Enforcement, Malfeasance, and Compensation of Enforcers," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 1-18, January.
    5. Jakob Svensson, 2005. "Eight Questions about Corruption," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(3), pages 19-42, Summer.
    6. Xing Li & Chong Liu & Xi Weng & Li-An Zhou, 2019. "Target Setting in Tournaments: Theory and Evidence from China," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(623), pages 2888-2915.
    7. Chenggang Xu, 2011. "The Fundamental Institutions of China's Reforms and Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1076-1151, December.
    8. Eric Maskin & Yingyi Qian & Chenggang Xu, 2000. "Incentives, Information, and Organizational Form," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(2), pages 359-378.
    9. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-715, September.
    10. Eriksson, Tor, 1999. "Executive Compensation and Tournament Theory: Empirical Tests on Danish Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(2), pages 262-280, April.
    11. Li, Hongbin & Zhou, Li-An, 2005. "Political turnover and economic performance: the incentive role of personnel control in China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1743-1762, September.
    12. Ruixue Jia & Masayuki Kudamatsu & David Seim, 2015. "Political Selection In China: The Complementary Roles Of Connections And Performance," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 631-668, August.
    13. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & N'Guessan, Tchetche, 1999. "Competition and corruption in an agency relationship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 271-295, December.
    14. Ehrenberg, Ronald G & Bognanno, Michael L, 1990. "Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1307-1324, December.
    15. Che, Jiahua & Chung, Kim-Sau & Qiao, Xue, 2019. "The king can do no wrong: On the criminal immunity of leaders," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 15-26.
    16. Che, Jiahua & Chung, Kim-Sau & Qiao, Xue, 2013. "The good, the bad, and the civil society," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 68-76.
    17. Besley, Timothy & McLaren, John, 1993. "Taxes and Bribery: The Role of Wage Incentives," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(416), pages 119-141, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wenzhou Li & Liang Chen & Pengfei Sheng, 2022. "The tone from above: Does tunnelling by ultimate owners impinge on the relations between managerial compensation and earnings management?," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 825-847, December.
    2. Zheng, Bingyong & Xiao, Junji, 2020. "Corruption and Investment: Theory and Evidence from China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 40-54.
    3. Chen, Bochao & Wang, Hang & Wang, Xianbin, 2024. "Innovation Like China: Evidence from Chinese Local Officials' Promotions," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    2. Suárez Serrato, Juan Carlos & Wang, Xiao Yu & Zhang, Shuang, 2019. "The limits of meritocracy: Screening bureaucrats under imperfect verifiability," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 223-241.
    3. Xue, Chang & Zhang, Xiaoyu, 2024. "Gloomy future, gloomy sky: Promotion incentives and pollution in China," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    4. Che, Jiahua & Chung, Kim-Sau & Qiao, Xue, 2019. "The king can do no wrong: On the criminal immunity of leaders," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 15-26.
    5. Junxue Jia & Jing Ning & Jing Zhang, 2023. "Information transparency, monitoring, and incentives under decentralization: Evidence from China's fiscal reform of “province managing county”," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 263-289, March.
    6. Yu, Jixiang & Shen, Kunrong, 2022. "Incentive effects of tournament size optimization on local officials in China," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    7. Wang, Li & Menkhoff, Lukas & Schröder, Michael & Xu, Xian, 2019. "Politicians’ promotion incentives and bank risk exposure in China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 63-94.
    8. Bingley, P. & Eriksson, T, 2001. "Pay Spread and Skewness. Employee Effort and Firm Productivity," Papers 01-2, Aarhus School of Business - Department of Economics.
    9. Zhang, Muyang & Zhou, Guangsu & Fan, Gang, 2020. "Political Control and Economic Inequality: Evidence from Chinese Cities," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    10. Christian Grund & Niels Westergaard-Nielsen, 2008. "The Dispersion of Employees' Wage Increases and Firm Performance," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 61(4), pages 485-501, July.
    11. Chen, Jidong & Shi, Xinzheng & Zhang, Ming-ang & Zhang, Sihan, 2024. "Centralization of environmental administration and air pollution: Evidence from China," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    12. Che, Jiahua & Chung, Kim-Sau & Lu, Yang K., 2017. "Decentralization and political career concerns," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 201-210.
    13. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Li’an Zhou & Jing Tao, 2009. "Government size, market-orientation and regional corruption: Evidence from the provincial level panel data," Frontiers of Economics in China, Springer;Higher Education Press, vol. 4(3), pages 425-448, September.
    15. Duran, Mihael, 2011. "Nachträgliche Reduktion von Vorstandsbezügen: Eine ökonomische Analyse der Herabsetzungsmöglichkeit von Vorstandsbezügen nach dem VorstAG [Ex post Reduction of Executive Compensation: An economic r," MPRA Paper 33815, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Edward P. Lazear & Kathryn L. Shaw, 2007. "Personnel Economics: The Economist's View of Human Resources," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 91-114, Fall.
    17. RafaelDi Tella & Federico Weinschelbaum, 2008. "Choosing agents and monitoring consumption: a note on wealth as a corruption-controlling device," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1552-1571, October.
    18. Dmitry Ryvkin & Andreas Ortmann, 2008. "The Predictive Power of Three Prominent Tournament Formats," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(3), pages 492-504, March.
    19. Toke S. Aidt, 2016. "Rent seeking and the economics of corruption," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 142-157, June.
    20. Sunde, Uwe, 2003. "Potential, Prizes and Performance: Testing Tournament Theory with Professional Tennis Data," IZA Discussion Papers 947, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    21. Josse Delfgaauw & Robert Dur & Arjan Non & Willem Verbeke, 2015. "The Effects of Prize Spread and Noise in Elimination Tournaments: A Natural Field Experiment," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(3), pages 521-569.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Institution; Tournament; Corruption; China;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:48:y:2020:i:1:p:182-197. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622864 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.