The Incentive Effects of Tournaments Revisited: Evidence from the European PGA Tour

This analysis of data from the 1987 European Men's Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour strongly supports the hypothesis that the level and structure of prizes in PGA tournaments influence players' performance. Specifically, players' performance appears to vary positively with both the total money prizes awarded in a tournament and the marginal return to effort in the final round of play (a value that varies among players largely depending on how the prize money is allocated among finishers of different ranks). The authors suggest that these results, together with the similar results of their earlier study of the 1984 U.S. Men's PGA Tour, may have implications for the design of compensation systems for certain groups of workers, such as corporate executives, college professors, and salespeople.