Women and Competition in Elimination Tournaments: Evidence from Professional Tennis Data

Thierry Lallemand, Robert Plasman and Francois Rycx

No 1843, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines how professional female tennisplayers react to: i) prize incentives and ii) heterogeneity in ex ante players' abilities. It is found that a larger prize spread encourages women to increase effort, even when controlling for many tournament and player characteristics. Further results indicate that uneven contests lead favourites to win more games and underdogs to be less performing. They also show that the performance differential between players increases with the ranking differential. These findings suggest that the outcome of a match is more linked to players' abilities than to players' incentives to adjust effort according to success chances.

Keywords: performance; sports economics; tournaments; incentives; women (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J33 J41 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2005-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Published - published in: Journal of Sports Economics, 2008, 9 (1), 3-19

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Related works:
Working Paper: Women and competition in elimination tournaments: evidence from professional tennis data (2008)
Working Paper: Women and competition in elimination tournaments: evidence from professional tennis data (2005)
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