IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v12y2011i1p3-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Peer Effects in Team Sports: Empirical Evidence From NCAA Relay Teams

Author

Listed:
  • Craig A. Depken II

    (Department of Economics, Belk College of Business, UNC-Charlotte, NC, USA, cdepken@uncc.edu)

  • Lisa E. Haglund

    (Department of Economics, University of Texas-Arlington, USA)

Abstract

This article investigates whether peer effects manifest in the performance of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) 4 × 400 m men’s relay teams. We test whether increasing the average quality of team members has a nonlinear and ultimately deleterious impact on team performance, measured by, relay time. Using both absolute and relative performance measures we find that increasing average team member quality improves team performance but at a decreasing rate. The authors attribute these diminishing returns to negative peer effects after finding that relay teams comprised of higher quality runners are more likely to underperform relative to their predicted quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Craig A. Depken II & Lisa E. Haglund, 2011. "Peer Effects in Team Sports: Empirical Evidence From NCAA Relay Teams," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(1), pages 3-19, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:12:y:2011:i:1:p:3-19
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002509361192
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002509361192
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1527002509361192?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Allen R. Sanderson & John J. Siegfried, 2003. "Thinking about Competitive Balance," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(4), pages 255-279, November.
    3. Gee San & Wen-Jhan Jane, 2008. "Wage dispersion and team performance: evidence from the small size professional baseball league in Taiwan," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(11), pages 883-886.
    4. Armin Falk & Andrea Ichino, 2006. "Clean Evidence on Peer Effects," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(1), pages 39-58, January.
    5. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    6. Fiona Carmichael & Dennis Thomas & Robert Ward, 2000. "Team performance: the case of English Premiership football," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 31-45.
    7. Jonathan Guryan & Kory Kroft & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2009. "Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 34-68, October.
    8. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    9. Ramaswamy, Ramana & Rowthorn, Robert E, 1991. "Efficiency Wages and Wage Dispersion," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 58(232), pages 501-514, November.
    10. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    11. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    12. David Berri & R. Jewell, 2004. "Wage inequality and firm performance: Professional basketball's natural experiment," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 32(2), pages 130-139, June.
    13. Barron, John M & Gjerde, Kathy Paulson, 1997. "Peer Pressure in an Agency Relationship," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(2), pages 234-254, April.
    14. HOLMSTROM, Bengt, 1979. "Moral hazard and observability," LIDAM Reprints CORE 379, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    15. DepkenII, Craig A., 2000. "Wage disparity and team productivity: evidence from major league baseball," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 87-92, April.
    16. Craig A. Depken, II & Larisa Mackey, 2009. "Driver Success in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: The Impact of Multi-Car Teams," Working Papers 0915, International Association of Sports Economists;North American Association of Sports Economists.
    17. Groves, Theodore, 1973. "Incentives in Teams," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 617-631, July.
    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. Brady, Ryan R. & Insler, Michael A. & Rahman, Ahmed S., 2017. "Bad Company: Understanding negative peer effects in college achievement," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 144-168.
    2. Brad R. Humphreys & Jie Yang, 2021. "Peer enforcement in teams: evidence from high-skill professional workers with repeated interactions," Chapters, in: Ruud H. Koning & Stefan Kesenne (ed.), A Modern Guide to Sports Economics, chapter 20, pages 294-316, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Richard J. Paulsen, 2022. "Peer effects and human capital accumulation: Time spent in college and productivity in the National Basketball Association," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 3611-3619, December.
    4. Candon Johnson & Robert Schultz & Joshua C. Hall, 2020. "Specialization and Performance: Evidence from NCAA 4 × 400 m Relay Times," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-7, November.
    5. Mariia Molodchik & Sofiia Paklina & Petr Parshakov, 2021. "Peer Effects on Individual Performance in a Team Sport," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(5), pages 571-586, June.
    6. Julia Müller & Thorsten Upmann, 2017. "Eigenvalue Productivity: Measurement of Individual Contributions in Teams," CESifo Working Paper Series 6679, CESifo.
    7. Matteo Pazzona, 2022. "Peer interactions and performance in a high‐skilled labour market," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(4), pages 1087-1116, October.
    8. Philipp Wegelin & Johannes Orlowski & Helmut M. Dietl, 2022. "The importance of high performing team members in complex team work: Results from quasi‐experiments in professional team sports," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(3), pages 1296-1310, July.
    9. Brady, Ryan R. & Insler, Michael A., 2019. "Order of play advantage in sequential tournaments: Evidence from randomized settings in professional golf," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 79-92.
    10. Julia Müller & Thorsten Upmann & Joachim Prinz, 2013. "Individual Team Productivity - A Conceptual Approach," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-183/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    11. W. David Allen, 2021. "Work Environment and Worker Performance: A View from the Goal Crease," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 418-448, December.
    12. Wen-Jhan Jane, 2015. "Peer Effects and Individual Performance," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(5), pages 531-539, June.

    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. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. John Brehm & Scott Gates, 1994. "When Supervision Fails to Induce Compliance," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(3), pages 323-343, July.
    3. Tat Y. Chan & Jia Li & Lamar Pierce, 2014. "Compensation and Peer Effects in Competing Sales Teams," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(8), pages 1965-1984, August.
    4. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    5. Depken II, Craig A. & Redmount, Esther & Snow, Arthur, 2001. "Shirking and the choice of technology: a theory of production inefficiency with an empirical application," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 383-402, April.
    6. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    7. Oindrila Dey & Swapnendu Banerjee, 2022. "Incentives, Status and Thereafter: A Critical Survey," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 11(1), pages 95-115, June.
    8. Koch Alexander K & Morgenstern Albrecht, 2010. "Coordination under the Shadow of Career Concerns," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-40, March.
    9. Awaya, Yu & Do, Jihwan, 2022. "Incentives under equal-pay constraint and subjective peer evaluation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 41-59.
    10. Dey, Oindrila & Banerjee, Swapnendu, 2014. "Status and incentives: A critical survey," MPRA Paper 57658, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Shasikanta Nandeibam, 1994. "A free-rider problem with a free-riding principal," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 1(1), pages 227-250, December.
    12. Arne Nygaard & Ingunn Myrtveit, 2000. "Moral hazard, competition and contract design: empirical evidence from managerial, franchised and entrepreneurial businesses in Norway," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(3), pages 349-356.
    13. Vijay K. Seth, 2012. "The East India Company—A Case Study in Corporate Governance," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 13(2), pages 221-238, June.
    14. David E. M. Sappington, 1991. "Incentives in Principal-Agent Relationships," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 45-66, Spring.
    15. Román, Francisco J., 2009. "An analysis of changes to a team-based incentive plan and its effects on productivity, product quality, and absenteeism," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 589-618, July.
    16. Kellner, Christian, 2015. "Tournaments as a response to ambiguity aversion in incentive contracts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 627-655.
    17. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2005. "Managing diversity by creating team identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 371-392, November.
    18. Aditya U. Kulkarni & Christian Wernz, 2020. "Optimal incentives for teams: a multiscale decision theory approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 288(1), pages 307-329, May.
    19. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2485-2563 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Ugo Merlone, 2002. "Incentives and Computing Systems for Team-Based Organizations: A Mathematical and Economic Analysis," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(6), pages 734-736, December.
    21. Rajesh K. Aggarwal & Andrew A. Samwick, 1999. "Executive Compensation, Strategic Competition, and Relative Performance Evaluation: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 1999-2043, December.
    22. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    teamwork; shirking; track and field; sports;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - 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:sae:jospec:v:12:y:2011:i:1:p:3-19. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.