Testing Contest Theory: Evidence from Best-of-Three Tennis Matches

David Malueg () and Andrew Yates

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2010, vol. 92, issue 3, 689-692

Abstract: We study strategic choice of effort in best-of-three contests between equally skilled players. Economic theory predicts such contests are more likely to end in two rounds than in three. If, however, a contest reaches a third round, each player is equally likely to win. We test these predictions with data from professional tennis matches, using betting odds to identify equally skilled opponents. The empirical results support the theoretical predictions, suggesting players strategically adjust efforts during a best-of-three contest. © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (100)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00021 link to full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:restat:v:92:y:2010:i:3:p:689-692

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().