European qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup can be manipulated

László Csató

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Tournament organizers supposedly design rules such that a team cannot be better off by exerting a lower effort. It is shown that the European qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup are not strategy-proof in this sense: a team might be eliminated if it wins in the last matchday of group stage, while it advances to play-offs by playing a draw, provided that all other results do not change. An example reveals that this scenario could have happened in October 2017, after four-fifth of all matches have already been played. We present a model and identify nine incentive incompatible qualifiers to recent UEFA European Championships or FIFA World Cups. A mechanism is suggested in order to seal the way of manipulation in group-based qualification systems.

Keywords: OR in sport; 2018 FIFA World Cup; tournament ranking; mechanism design; strategy-proofness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C44 C72 D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-11-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des and nep-spo
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/83437/1/MPRA_paper_83437.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

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