研究期間：10208~10307;The theoretical basis for this three-year project is derived by incorporating the standard prize structure of the signalling literature into the tournament framework. We therefore obtain several important results that have not been mentioned (or have been ignored) in previous studies, including: (i) The equilibrium effort exhibits a common “increasing-then-decreasing” pattern either in the test discriminability or in the ability difference. (ii) Members of the threshold group compete vigorously, generating an upward pressure to abler exam takers, in a very decisive test. Due to the restriction that ability and effort are not measurable in empirical data, we pre- pare to explore the impacts of several important control variables, such as the pass rate, the test discriminability, and the difference in endowment, on effort decisions of heterogeneous contestants by designing behavioral and fMRI experiments.
