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Sabotage in Tournaments: Making the Beautiful Game a Bit Less Beautiful

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Author Info
Garicano, Luis
Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio

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Abstract

We exploit an incentive change in professional soccer leagues aimed at encouraging more attacking and goal scoring to obtain evidence on the effect of stronger incentives on productive and destructive effort. Using as control the behavior of the same teams in a competition that experienced no changes in incentives, we provide differences-in-differences estimates of the effect of the incentive change on the behavior of teams. We find that, although teams increased offensive effort, they also increased destructive effort (`sabotage') substantially, resulting in no net change in scoring. When ahead, teams became more conservative, increasing their defenders, scoring less goals, and allowing fewer attempts to score by their opponents. We also find that teams that engage more in sabotage activities depress the attendance at their rival's home stadiums, and that indeed attendance suffered as a result of the incentive change. Thus, teams responded to stronger incentives, but in an undesirable way.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 5231.

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Date of creation: Sep 2005
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5231

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Related research
Keywords: incentives multitasking sabotage tournaments

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior
D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information
J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
M55 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Contracting Devices

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Bull, Clive & Schotter, Andrew & Weigelt, Keith, 1987. "Tournaments and Piece Rates: An Experimental Study," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(1), pages 1-33, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Edward P. Lazear & Sherwin Rosen, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," NBER Working Papers 0401, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Itoh, Hideshi, 1992. "Cooperation in Hierarchical Organizations: An Incentive Perspective," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(2), pages 321-45, April.
  4. Baker, George P, 1992. "Incentive Contracts and Performance Measurement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 598-614, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Mark Duggan & Steven D. Levitt, 2002. "Winning Isn't Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1594-1605, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  6. Brian A. Jacob & Steven D. Levitt, 2003. "Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating," NBER Working Papers 9413, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  7. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-15, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  8. Robert Gibbons, 1998. "Incentives in Organizations," NBER Working Papers 6695, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Gibbons, Robert, 1998. "Incentives in Organizations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 115-32, Fall. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Drago, Robert & Garvey, Gerald T, 1998. "Incentives for Helping on the Job: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(1), pages 1-25, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1994. "The Firm as an Incentive System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 972-91, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Kathryn Anderson & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jennie E. Raymond, 1993. "The effect of creaming on placement rates under the Job Training Partnership Act," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 46(4), pages 613-624, July.
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  14. Green, Jerry R & Stokey, Nancy L, 1983. "A Comparison of Tournaments and Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(3), pages 349-64, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Rafael Rob & Peter Zemsky, 2002. "Social Capital, Corporate Culture, and Incentive Intensity," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 33(2), pages 243-257, Summer.
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  17. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Mark Walker & John Wooders, 2001. "Minimax Play at Wimbledon," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1521-1538, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  21. Cragg, Michael, 1997. "Performance Incentives in the Public Sector: Evidence from the Job Training Partnership Act," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 147-68, April.
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Moschini, GianCarlo, 2008. "Incentives And Outcomes In A Strategic Setting: The 3-Points-For-A-Win System In Soccer," Staff General Research Papers 12942, Iowa State University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  2. Jeffrey Carpenter & Peter Hans Matthews & John Schirm, 2007. "TOURNAMENTS AND OFFICE POLITICS: Evidence from a real effort experiment," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0709, Middlebury College, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Babatunde Buraimo & David Forrest & Robert Simmons, 2007. "The Twelfth Man? Refereeing Bias in English and German Soccer," Working Papers 0707, International Association of Sports Economists. [Downloadable!]
  4. Jan Vecer & Tomoyuki Ichiba & Mladen Laudanovic, 2007. "On Probabilistic Excitement of Sports Games," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 3(3), pages 6. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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