IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v15y2014i3p263-284.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sandbagging

Author

Listed:
  • Matthias Kräkel

Abstract

Participants of dynamic contests sometimes play with the rules of the game by withholding effort in the beginning. Such behavior is referred to as sandbagging. I consider a two-period contest between heterogeneous players and analyze potential sandbagging of high-ability participants in period one. This sandbagging can be beneficial to avoid second-period matches against other high-ability opponents. I characterize the conditions under which sandbagging leads to a coordination problem, similar to that of the battle of the sexes. Moreover, if players' abilities have a stronger impact on the outcome of the first-period contest than effort choices, mutual sandbagging by all high-ability players can arise.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthias Kräkel, 2014. "Sandbagging," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 15(3), pages 263-284, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:15:y:2014:i:3:p:263-284
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002512449349
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002512449349
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1527002512449349?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. Konrad, Kai A., 2009. "Strategy and Dynamics in Contests," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199549603, Decembrie.
    3. Jun Zhang & Ruqu Wang, 2009. "The Role of Information Revelation in Elimination Contests," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 613-641, March.
    4. Margaret A. Meyer, 1991. "Learning from Coarse Information: Biased Contests and Career Profiles," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(1), pages 15-41.
    5. Andrew Schotter & Keith Weigelt, 1992. "Asymmetric Tournaments, Equal Opportunity Laws, and Affirmative Action: Some Experimental Results," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 511-539.
    6. 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.
    7. Hans K. Hvide, 2002. "Tournament Rewards and Risk Taking," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(4), pages 877-898, October.
    8. Kräkel, Matthias, 2012. "Competitive careers as a way to mediocracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 76-87.
    9. Konrad, Kai A. & Kovenock, Dan, 2009. "Multi-battle contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 256-274, May.
    10. Jun Zhang & Ruqu Wang, 2009. "The Role of Information Revelation in Elimination Contests," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 613-641, March.
    11. Johannes Hörner & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2007. "Costly Signalling in Auctions -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(1), pages 173-206.
    12. Hoffler, Felix & Sliwka, Dirk, 2003. "Do new brooms sweep clean? When and why dismissing a manager increases the subordinates' performance," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(5), pages 877-890, October.
    13. Gürtler, Oliver & Münster, Johannes, 2010. "Sabotage in dynamic tournaments," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 179-190, March.
    14. Helmut M. Dietl & Egon Franck & Markus Lang, 2008. "Overinvestment In Team Sports Leagues: A Contest Theory Model," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 55(3), pages 353-368, July.
    15. James A. Fairburn & James M. Malcomson, 2001. "Performance, Promotion, and the Peter Principle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(1), pages 45-66.
    16. Stefan Késenne, 2006. "The Win Maximization Model Reconsidered," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(4), pages 416-427, November.
    17. Xavier Freixas & Roger Guesnerie & Jean Tirole, 1985. "Planning under Incomplete Information and the Ratchet Effect," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(2), pages 173-191.
    18. Konrad, Kai A, 2000. "Sabotage in Rent-Seeking Contests," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 155-165, April.
    19. Tirole, Jean, 2002. "Rational irrationality: Some economics of self-management," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 633-655, May.
    20. Anja Schöttner, 2008. "Fixed-prize tournaments versus first-price auctions in innovation contests," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 35(1), pages 57-71, April.
    21. Gürtler, Oliver, 2011. "The first-order approach in rank-order tournaments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 111(3), pages 185-187, June.
    22. 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.
    23. Christopher Harris & John Vickers, 1987. "Racing with Uncertainty," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(1), pages 1-21.
    24. Florian Ederer, 2010. "Feedback and Motivation in Dynamic Tournaments," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 733-769, September.
    25. Scott M. Gilpatric, 2011. "Cheating In Contests," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(4), pages 1042-1053, October.
    26. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-715, September.
    27. Beck A. Taylor & Justin G. Trogdon, 2002. "Losing to Win: Tournament Incentives in the National Basketball Association," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 23-41, January.
    28. Johannes Münster, 2009. "Repeated Contests with Asymmetric Information," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(1), pages 89-118, February.
    29. O'Keeffe, Mary & Viscusi, W Kip & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1984. "Economic Contests: Comparative Reward Schemes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 27-56, January.
    30. 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.
    31. Baron, David P. & Besanko, David, 1984. "Regulation and information in a continuing relationship," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 267-302.
    32. Kong-Pin Chen, 2003. "Sabotage in Promotion Tournaments," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 119-140, April.
    33. Johannes Münster, 2007. "Selection Tournaments, Sabotage, and Participation," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 943-970, December.
    34. Stefan Szymanski, 2004. "Professional Team Sports Are Only a Game," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 5(2), pages 111-126, May.
    35. Kiyotaki, Fumi, 2004. "The effects of a consolation match on the promotion tournament," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 264-281, June.
    36. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Tirole, Jean, 1988. "The Dynamics of Incentive Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1153-1175, September.
    37. Baik, Kyung Hwan, 1998. "Difference-form contest success functions and effort levels in contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 685-701, November.
    38. Barry J. Nalebuff & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1983. "Prices and Incentives: Towards a General Theory of Compensation and Competition," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(1), pages 21-43, Spring.
    39. Ed Balsdon & Lesley Fong & Mark A. Thayer, 2007. "Corruption in College Basketball? Evidence of Tanking in Postseason Conference Tournaments," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(1), pages 19-38, February.
    40. Dixit, Avinash K, 1987. "Strategic Behavior in Contests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 891-898, December.
    41. Krakel, Matthias, 2007. "Doping and cheating in contest-like situations," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 988-1006, December.
    42. Dragon, Robert & Garvey, Gerald T. & Turnbull, Geoffrey K., 1996. "A collective tournament," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 223-227, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Matthias Kräkel, 2014. "Optimal seedings in elimination tournaments revisited," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 2(1), pages 77-91, April.
    2. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    3. Kräkel, Matthias & Schöttner, Anja, 2010. "Technology choice, relative performance pay, and worker heterogeneity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 748-758, December.
    4. Cedric Duvinage & Peter-J. Jost, 2019. "The Role of Referees in Professional Sports Contests," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(8), pages 1014-1050, December.
    5. Kräkel, Matthias & Nieken, Petra, 2015. "Relative performance pay in the shadow of crisis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 244-268.
    6. Peter-J. Jost, 2021. "“The ball is round, the game lasts 90 minutes, everything else is pure theoryâ€," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(1), pages 27-74, January.
    7. Drugov, Mikhail & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2017. "Biased contests for symmetric players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 116-144.
    8. 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.
    9. Kräkel, Matthias & Nieken, Petra & Przemeck, Judith, 2014. "Risk taking and investing in electoral competition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 98-120.
    10. Kräkel, Matthias & Schöttner, Anja, 2010. "Technology Choice and Incentives under Relative Performance Schemes," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 10/2010, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    11. Kräkel, Matthias, 2008. "Optimal risk taking in an uneven tournament game with risk averse players," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(11), pages 1219-1231, December.
    12. Bastani, Spencer & Giebe, Thomas & Gürtler, Oliver, 2022. "Simple equilibria in general contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 264-280.
    13. Lian Jian & Zheng Li & Tracy Xiao Liu, 2017. "Simultaneous versus sequential all-pay auctions: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(3), pages 648-669, September.
    14. Brown, Alasdair & Chowdhury, Subhasish M., 2017. "The hidden perils of affirmative action: Sabotage in handicap contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 273-284.
    15. 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.
    16. Loukas Balafoutas & E. Glenn Dutcher & Florian Lindner & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2017. "The Optimal Allocation Of Prizes In Tournaments Of Heterogeneous Agents," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 461-478, January.
    17. Christian Ewerhart & Julia Lareida, 2018. "Voluntary disclosure in asymmetric contests," ECON - Working Papers 279, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Jul 2023.
    18. Gürtler, Oliver & Kräkel, Matthias, 2010. "Optimal tournament contracts for heterogeneous workers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 180-191, August.
    19. Josse Delfgaauw & Robert Dur & Arjan Non & Willem Verbeke, 2015. "The Effects of Prize Spread and Noise in Elimination Tournaments: A Natural Field Experiment," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(3), pages 521-569.
    20. Barbieri, Stefano & Serena, Marco, 2022. "Biasing dynamic contests between ex-ante symmetric players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 1-30.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    coordination problem; dynamic contest; heterogeneous contestants; withholding effort;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    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:15:y:2014:i:3:p:263-284. 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.