Zusammenfassung:
Behavioral economics documents the importance of status and self-image concerns in the workplace, but is largely silent about how to instrumentalize them to induce effort. Awardsidespread in the corporate sector and elsewhere are motivators that derive their value from such social concerns. Panel data from the call center of a large international bank allow us to estimate the impact of receiving an award on e ort. The performance of winners proves to be signi cantly higher than that of comparable nonrecipients after the award has been presented. This increase in work e ort is sizeable, robust, and not driven by reverse causation.