Abstract
In tournament theory the effects of competitions in which the best performers are awarded a fixed prize are studied. The tournament idea has been used to explain career patterns in large US law firms and in European judicial hierarchies. It has also been suggested in a prescriptive way as a method to select judges for the US Supreme Court. Tournaments theory helps to understand under which conditions lawyers and judges engage in a rate race to achieve promotion. But important assumptions of the formal tournament models are not met in practice, so real tournaments are unlikely occur in practice. The theory should therefore not be interpreted as an exact descriptive or prescriptive model of behavior but rather as a useful metaphor to help understand empirical patterns.
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Schneider, M. (2019). Tournament Theory. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G.B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7753-2_482
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7753-2_482
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