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Inspired by social-comparison theory, we examine the effectiveness of relative performance ranking as an inherent incentive mechanism to enhance productivity, specifically testing the possibility that the effect is moderated by two features of the feedback design: private/public ranking (whether ranking information was released privately to each individual or announced publicly to all) and fixed/rank pay (whether pay is fixed or positively and monotonically based on rank). Furthermore, generalizing from the theoretical and experimental literature on bids in contests, we introduce individual attitudes toward risk as a potential moderator associating stronger incentive effects of feedback with those who are more tolerant toward risk. We test our hypotheses through a real-effort lab experiment with university students and a companion lab-in-field experiment with full-time employees. We empirically demonstrate both the …