采用实验研究的方法评价机会公平规则和倾斜政策对员工努力水平及雇主收益的影响.利用对130个被试进行的7个实验,本文获得了如下研究结论:与基准实验相比,在不公平锦标赛实验中,被试的努力水平有所降低；在不对称锦标赛实验中,随着代理人能力不对称程度逐渐增加,有利被试和不利被试选择的努力水平均会减少；在倾斜政策实验中,实施倾斜政策并没有增加员工的总产出,因而也没有提高雇主的收益.文末从企业组织和政府政策两方面分析了研究结论的实际意义.%Since 1980's, the rank-order tournament theory based on relative performance evaluation (RPE) has received attention by scholars in many different disciplines. In the business discipline, the tournament theory has been extended into three models: unfair tournament model, uneven tournament model and affirmative action model. According to the unfair tournament model, some workers have competitive advantages over others in the sense that their output has been added artificially in order to exceed the output of their competitors. According to the uneven tournament model, employees with different abilities are assigned different cost functions so that some employees are faced with higher costs than the others. The combination of unfair tournament and uneven tournament would define an affirmative action model in which the cost-disadvantaged workers are compensated by the increase of output.This paper is intended to answer the following three questions. First, in order to address the discrimination problem in the unfair tournament, should employer treat all employees equally? Is it reasonable to implement the equal opportunity law? Second, how much effort will be chosen by employees with different abilities in the uneven tournament? Does the problem " Race between Hare and Tortoise" emerge? Third, should the affirmative action policy be adopted to favor those employees with low abilities? If the affirmative action program has been put into practice, will the objective of equality be achieved at the cost of efficiency loss? In this paper, based on the seminal work by Schotter and Weigelt ( 1992) , we experimentally study the impact of equal opportunity law and affirmative action on agents' effort. Our study differs from the previous research in two ways. First, we recruit Chinese students as subjects in seven experiments. This design can provide new evidence and promote research interests among domestic scholars. Second, in contrast with findings in Schotter and Weigelt's study ( 1992) our experimental results suggest the implementation of affirmative action programs do not increase subjects' effort and their total output. This finding is quite different from that of most studies on affirmative action or weakens most literature based on Schotter and Weigelt's study.In the first part, following the basic tournament models established by Lazear & Rosen (1981) and Schotter & Weigelt (1992) the equilibrium efforts are derived respectively for the unfair tournament model, uneven tournament model and affirmative action model. A brief discussion on those models and some research inferences are presented to provide the baseline for empirical analysis. The second part gives a detailed explanation of the experimental design and experimental procedures adopted in this study. We recruited 130 subjects from students attending economics or management courses at Chongqing University. Seven experiments were designed and carried out to study the behavior modes of subjects in different tournament settings. There are two main parameters in these " experiments, kanda , representing the degree of unfairness and asymmetry respectively in a certain tournament. To be more specific, each experiment differs from the other one by a change in only one parameter. Experiment 1 is a fair and symmetrical benchmark experiment. In order to investigate the impact of unfair rules, we change the experimental rules in experiments 2 and 3 so that the output of one subject will be artificially higher than the output of the other one. In another word, someone has been treatedpreferentially which are indicated by k = 25 or 45. Since this is the only experimental parameter changed, the comparison with the baseline experiment 1 would isolate and identify the impact of the unfairness or discrimination. Experiments 4 and 5 focus on the setting of uneven tournament in which the cost of efforts for one subject is a times higher than that for the other one ( a > 1 ). Parameter a would be 2 or 4 in experiment 4 or 5 , respectively. Finally, experiments 6 and 7 examine the incentive effects of affirmative action programs. In experiment 6, we use the parameter of experiment 4 ( a = 2) and introduce an affirmative action program (k = 25 ) , which favors cost-disadvantaged subjects.In the third part, we compare the effort level and payoff assigned to subjects in 7 experiments discussed above, and use a variety of parametric and nonparametric statistical methods. The results of statistical analysis are also presented in figures or tables to improve our understanding.In the fourth part, research conclusions are presented as follows. First, in contrast to the benchmark experiment, the effort level of all subjects decreases in the unfair tournament experiments. Second, as the asymmetry of agents' abilities gradually exacerbates, both the advantaged subjects and the disadvantaged subjects will choose less effort in the uneven tournaments. Third, the implementation of affirmative action does not increase employees' total output and employer's revenue. We make conclusions from the perspective of enterprise organization and governmental policy-making. For business organizations, the implementation of equal opportunity law, the adoption of grouping strategy in employee management, as well as the fostering competition in different groups based on the basis of employees' different abilities (sorting) fulfill the interests of employers. From the perspective of effective governmental policy-making, governments may want to re-examine the impact of affirmative action policies ( e. G. Scores-adding in university entrance exam, insurance for low-income individuals or families) on social welfare.
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