Incentives and Outcomes in a Strategic Setting: The 3-Points-For-A-Win System in Soccer

GianCarlo Moschini

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We exploit a major structural change that has occurred in world soccer to study the impact of incentives on outcomes in a strategic setting. A game-theoretic model is developed that captures some essential strategic elements of soccer vis-Ã -vis the number of points awarded to a win. The observable implications of the model are tested using a large dataset that spans 30 years and 35 countries. The empirical results support the theoretical model and show that the 3-point system has led to a statistically significant increase in the expected number of goals and a decrease in the fractions of drawn matches.

Keywords: Association football; Nash equilibrium; panel data; strategic incentives; supermodularity; tournaments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C72 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-06-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Economic Inquiry, January 2010, vol. 48 no. 1, pp. 65-79

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Related works:
Journal Article: INCENTIVES AND OUTCOMES IN A STRATEGIC SETTING: THE 3‐POINTS‐FOR‐A‐WIN SYSTEM IN SOCCER (2010)
Working Paper: Incentives and Outcomes in a Strategic Setting: The 3-Points-for-a-Win System in Soccer (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:12942

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