IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v59y2021i1p329-343.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

If You Don'T Like The Outcome, Change The Contest

Author

Listed:
  • Jason A. Winfree

Abstract

This article analyzes contests when contestants derive heterogeneous benefits from winning and investments are seen as costs to the contest designer. An example of this is sports leagues maximizing league profits. For sports leagues, optimal contests depend upon the heterogeneity of market sizes and the impact of team investment on winning. Sports leagues have mechanisms to change the structure of contests, implying they have some control of the expected payoff of teams, the value of the athletes, and the balance of the league. Data from Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association are used to empirically estimate the model. (JEL C72, L10, L83)

Suggested Citation

  • Jason A. Winfree, 2021. "If You Don'T Like The Outcome, Change The Contest," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 329-343, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:59:y:2021:i:1:p:329-343
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12946
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12946
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecin.12946?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. J. Amegashie, 2006. "A contest success function with a tractable noise parameter," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 135-144, January.
    2. Jeffery Borland, 2003. "Demand for Sport," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 19(4), pages 478-502, Winter.
    3. Che, Yeon-Koo & Gale, Ian, 2000. "Difference-Form Contests and the Robustness of All-Pay Auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 22-43, January.
    4. Marco Runkel, 2006. "Optimal contest design, closeness and the contest success function," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 217-231, October.
    5. Green, Colin & Lozano, Fernando & Simmons, Rob, 2015. "Rank-order tournaments, probability of winning and investing in talent: evidence from champions' league qualifying rules," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 232, pages 30-40, May.
    6. Itay Fainmesser & Chaim Fershtman & Neil Gandal, 2009. "A Consistent Weighted Ranking Scheme With an Application to NCAA College Football Rankings," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(6), pages 582-600, December.
    7. Simon Rottenberg, 1956. "The Baseball Players' Labor Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64, pages 242-242.
    8. Hurley, Terrance M. & Shogren, Jason F., 1998. "Effort levels in a Cournot Nash contest with asymmetric information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 195-210, June.
    9. Roman M. Sheremeta, 2011. "Contest Design: An Experimental Investigation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(2), pages 573-590, April.
    10. Dasgupta, Ani & Nti, Kofi O., 1998. "Designing an optimal contest," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 587-603, November.
    11. Steven Salaga & Alan Ostfield & Jason Winfree, 2014. "Revenue Sharing with Heterogeneous Investments in Sports Leagues: Share Media, Not Stadiums," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 45(1), pages 1-19, August.
    12. N. Winchester & R. T. Stefani, 2013. "An innovative approach to National Football League standings using bonus points," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(1), pages 123-134, January.
    13. PEETERS, Thomas, 2010. "The shape of success: Estimating contest success functions in sports," Working Papers 2010022, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    14. Rodney Fort & Jason Winfree, 2009. "Sports Really are Different: The Contest Success Function and the Supply of Talent," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 34(1), pages 69-80, February.
    15. Rodney Fort & James Quirk, 2011. "Optimal Competitive Balance In A Season Ticket League," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(2), pages 464-473, April.
    16. John Charles Bradbury, 2019. "Determinants Of Revenue In Sports Leagues: An Empirical Assessment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(1), pages 121-140, January.
    17. Grossmann, Martin, 2014. "Uncertain contest success function," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 134-148.
    18. Stefan Szymanski, 2010. "The Economic Design of Sporting Contests," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Comparative Economics of Sport, chapter 1, pages 1-78, Palgrave Macmillan.
    19. Szymanski, Stefan & Valletti, Tommaso M., 2005. "Incentive effects of second prizes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 467-481, June.
    20. Glazer, Amihai & Hassin, Refael, 1988. "Optimal Contests," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 26(1), pages 133-143, January.
    21. Stergios Skaperdas, 1996. "Contest success functions (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(2), pages 283-290.
    22. Michael T. Maloney & Robert E. McCormick, 2000. "The Response of Workers to Wages in Tournaments," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 1(2), pages 99-123, May.
    23. Liam J. A. Lenten, 2008. "Unbalanced Schedules And The Estimation Of Competitive Balance In The Scottish Premier League," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 55(4), pages 488-508, September.
    24. Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2011. "The optimal sorting of players in contests between groups," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 564-572.
    25. Dongryul Lee & Joon Song, 2019. "Optimal Team Contests to Induce More Efforts," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(3), pages 448-476, April.
    26. Rodney Fort & James Quirk, 2010. "Optimal Competitive Balance in Single-Game Ticket Sports Leagues," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(6), pages 587-601, December.
    27. Jack Hirshleifer, 1989. "Conflict and rent-seeking success functions: Ratio vs. difference models of relative success," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 101-112, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bruckner, Dominik & Sahm, Marco, 2023. "Party Politics: A Contest Perspective," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277714, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Markus LANG & Alexander RATHKE & Marco RUNKEL, 2010. "The Economic Consequences Of Foreigner Rules In National Sports Leagues," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 31, pages 47-64.
    2. Helmut Dietl & Egon Franck & Martin Grossmann & Markus Lang, 2009. "Contest Theory and its Applications in Sports," Working Papers 0029, University of Zurich, Center for Research in Sports Administration (CRSA).
    3. Jia, Hao & Skaperdas, Stergios & Vaidya, Samarth, 2013. "Contest functions: Theoretical foundations and issues in estimation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 211-222.
    4. Dorian Owen, 2014. "Measurement of competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 3, pages 41-59, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Helmut Dietl & Egon Franck & Markus Lang & Alexander Rathke, 2010. "Organizational Differences between U.S. Major Leagues and European Leagues: Implications for Salary Caps," Working Papers 0035, University of Zurich, Center for Research in Sports Administration (CRSA).
    6. Dongryul Lee & Joon Song, 2019. "Optimal Team Contests to Induce More Efforts," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(3), pages 448-476, April.
    7. Rodney Fort, 2015. "Managerial Objectives: A Retrospective on Utility Maximization in Pro Team Sports," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 62(1), pages 75-89, February.
    8. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Patricia Esteve‐González & Anwesha Mukherjee, 2023. "Heterogeneity, leveling the playing field, and affirmative action in contests," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(3), pages 924-974, January.
    9. Raul Caruso & Francesco Addesa & Marco Di Domizio, 2019. "The Determinants of the TV Demand for Soccer: Empirical Evidence on Italian Serie A for the Period 2008-2015," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(1), pages 25-49, January.
    10. Hao Jia & Stergios Skaperdas, 2011. "Technologies of Conflict," Working Papers 101111, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    11. Helmut M. Dietl & Markus Lang & Stephan Werner, 2009. "Social Welfare in Sports Leagues with Profit‐Maximizing and/or Win‐Maximizing Clubs," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 76(2), pages 375-396, October.
    12. Sakshi Gupta & Ram Singh, 2018. "On Existence and Properties of Pure-strategy Equilibria under Contests," Working Papers id:12840, eSocialSciences.
    13. Konrad, Kai A., 2007. "Strategy in contests: an introduction [Strategie in Turnieren – eine Einführung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2007-01, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    14. Dietl Helmut & Duschl Tobias & Franck Egon & Lang Markus, 2012. "A Contest Model of a Professional Sports League with Two-Sided Markets," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 232(3), pages 336-359, June.
    15. Helmut M. Dietl & Markus Lang & Alexander Rathke, 2011. "The Combined Effect Of Salary Restrictions And Revenue Sharing In Sports Leagues," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(2), pages 447-463, April.
    16. Cason, Timothy N. & Masters, William A. & Sheremeta, Roman M., 2020. "Winner-take-all and proportional-prize contests: Theory and experimental results," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 314-327.
    17. P. Dorian Owen & Nicholas King, 2015. "Competitive Balance Measures In Sports Leagues: The Effects Of Variation In Season Length," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 731-744, January.
    18. Sheremeta, Roman, 2009. "Essays on Experimental Investigation of Lottery Contests," MPRA Paper 49888, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Blavatskyy, Pavlo R., 2010. "Contest success function with the possibility of a draw: Axiomatization," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 267-276, March.
    20. Helmut Dietl & Martin Grossmann & Andreas Hefti & Markus Lang, 2015. "Spillovers in Sports Leagues with Promotion and Relegation," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 62(1), pages 59-74, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:59:y:2021:i:1:p:329-343. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.