Potential, Prizes and Performance: Testing Tournament Theory with Professional Tennis Data

Uwe Sunde

No 947, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper tests two hypotheses from the theory of elimination tournaments: (i) that uneven tournaments, where the contestants are ex ante heterogeneous, entail lower effort exertion; this is a prediction from agency theory that has not been tested empirically before; and (ii) whether incentives set through prizes matter for effort exertion; this assumption underlies any agency theory about elimination tournaments, and has been empirically tested in other contexts. The evidence obtained with data from professional tennis tournaments supports both the assumption that incentives matter, as well as the theoretical implications concerning uneven tournaments among heterogeneous contestants.

Keywords: incentives in tournaments; tennis; uneven tournaments; elimination tournaments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J33 J41 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2003-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Published - substantially revised version published as 'Heterogeneity and Performance in Tournaments: A Test for Incentive Effect using Professional Tennis Data' in: Applied Economics, 2010, 41 (25), 3199-3208

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