Incentives, competition, and inequality in markets for creative production

摘要: Abstract Incentive structures and the intensity of competition play a key role in shaping quality direction creative work. Organizing incentives as stratified rewards has emerged universal feature modern society. However, this implications for producers consumers work that are not fully understood. We test effects reward stratification on producers, reviewers, by using data from large online experiment an artificial market products. find induced shapes evolution production. The each tier is consistent with its position hierarchy. top maintains high standards attracting many submissions then filtering output, operating effective sorting device budget-constrained consumers. leads to higher levels inequality exit among who fall behind earnings, despite producing high-quality discuss broad across individual aggregate levels. This discussion contributes cumulative advantage debate industries specifically, aspects scientific fields industrial markets more broadly.