Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment: Comment

Martin Kocher, Marc V. Lenz and Matthias Sutter
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Marc V. Lenz: University of Cologne

No 4846, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Apesteguia and Palacios-Huerta (forthcoming) report for a sample of 129 shootouts from various seasons in ten different competitions that teams kicking first in soccer penalty shootouts win significantly more often than teams kicking second. Collecting data for the entire history of six major soccer competitions we cannot replicate their result. Teams kicking first win only 53.4% of 262 shootouts in our data, which is not significantly different from random. Our findings have two implications: (1) Apesteguia and Palacios-Huerta's results are not generally robust. (2) Using specific subsamples without a coherent criterion for data selection might lead to non-representative findings.

Keywords: field experiment; psychological pressure; first-mover advantage; tournament; penalty shootouts; soccer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2010-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - substantially extended version published as: 'Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments: New Evidence from Randomized Natural Experiments' in: Management Science, 2012, 58 (8), 1585-1591

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Related works:
Working Paper: Psychological pressure in competitive environments: Evidence from a randomized natural experiment: Comment (2010)
Working Paper: Psychological pressure in competitive environments: Evidence from a randomized natural experiment: Comment (2010)
Working Paper: Psychological pressure in competitive environments: Evidence from a randomized natural experiment: Comment (2010)
Working Paper: Psychological pressure in competitive environments: Evidence from a randomized natural experiment: Comment (2010)
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