IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/syd/wpaper/2018-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fooled by randomness: over-rewarding luck

Author

Listed:
  • Gauriot, Romain
  • Page, Lionel

Abstract

We provide evidence of a violation of the informativeness principle whereby lucky successes are overly rewarded. We isolate a quasi-experimental situation where the success of an agent is as good as random. To do so, we use high quality data on football (soccer) matches and select shots on goal which landed on the goal posts. Using non scoring shots, taken from a similar location on the pitch, as counterfactuals to scoring shots, we estimate the causal effect of a lucky success (goal) on the evaluation of the player’s performance. We find clear evidence that luck is overly influencing managers’ decisions and evaluators’ ratings. Our results suggest that this phenomenon is likely to be widespread in economic organizations.

Suggested Citation

  • Gauriot, Romain & Page, Lionel, 2018. "Fooled by randomness: over-rewarding luck," Working Papers 2018-03, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:syd:wpaper:2018-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ-wpseries.com/2018/201803.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 2005. "Contract Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262025760, December.
    2. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    3. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    4. Daniel R. Marburger, 2003. "Does the Assignment of Property Rights Encourage or Discourage Shirking?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(1), pages 19-34, February.
    5. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    6. Prendergast, Canice & Topel, Robert H, 1996. "Favoritism in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 958-978, October.
    7. Romain Gauriot & Lionel Page, 2015. "I Take Care of My Own: A Field Study on How Leadership Handles Conflict between Individual and Collective Incentives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 414-419, May.
    8. Alberto Abadie & Guido W. Imbens, 2006. "Large Sample Properties of Matching Estimators for Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(1), pages 235-267, January.
    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. Nisvan Erkal & Lata Gangadharan & Boon Han Koh, 2018. "By chance or by choice? Biased attribution of others’ outcomes," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 2040, The University of Melbourne.
    2. Colella, Fabrizio & Dalton, Patricio & Giusti, G., 2018. "You'll Never Walk Alone : The Effect of Moral Support on Performance," Other publications TiSEM 1dac53ca-9483-48f5-84b0-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Raphael Flepp & Egon Franck, 2019. "The role of boards' misperceptions in the relation between managerial turnover and performance: Evidence from European football," Working Papers 380, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    4. Barry Reilly & Robert Witt, 2021. "The Effect of League Design on Spectator Attendance: A Regression Discontinuity Design Approach," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(5), pages 514-545, June.
    5. Anil Özdemir & Helmut Dietl & Giambattista Rossi & Robert Simmons, 2020. "Are Workers Rewarded for Inconsistent Performance?," Working Papers 386, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).

    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. Romain Gauriot & Lionel Page, 2019. "Fooled by Performance Randomness: Overrewarding Luck," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(4), pages 658-666, October.
    2. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Romain Gauriot & Lionel Page, 2019. "Fooled by Performance Randomness: Overrewarding Luck," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(4), pages 658-666, October.
    4. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2011. "Personnel Economics: Hiring and Incentives," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 20, pages 1769-1823, Elsevier.
    5. Canice Prendergast, 2000. "The Tenuous Tradeoff Between Risk and Incentives," NBER Working Papers 7815, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Luis Garicano & Luis Rayo, 2016. "Why Organizations Fail: Models and Cases," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(1), pages 137-192, March.
    7. Bushman, Robert M. & Smith, Abbie J., 2001. "Financial accounting information and corporate governance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 237-333, December.
    8. Marchegiani, Lucia & Reggiani, Tommaso G. & Rizzolli, Matteo, 2011. "How Unjust! An Experimental Investigation of Supervisors' Evaluation Errors and Agents' Incentives," IZA Discussion Papers 6254, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    10. 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.
    11. Renee B. Adams & Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael S. Weisbach, 2010. "The Role of Boards of Directors in Corporate Governance: A Conceptual Framework and Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 58-107, March.
    12. Tomasz Obloj & Peter Zemsky, 2015. "Value creation and value capture under moral hazard: Exploring the micro-foundations of buyer– supplier relationships," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(8), pages 1146-1163, August.
    13. Konstantinos Pouliakas, 2010. "Pay Enough, Don't Pay Too Much or Don't Pay at All? The Impact of Bonus Intensity on Job Satisfaction," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 597-626, November.
    14. 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.
    15. Imhof, Lorens & Kräkel, Matthias, 2014. "Bonus pools and the informativeness principle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 180-191.
    16. Christoph Feichter & Isabella Grabner, 2020. "Empirische Forschung zu Management Control – Ein Überblick und neue Trends [Empirical Management Control Reserach—An Overview and Future Directions]," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 72(2), pages 149-181, June.
    17. Matthias Benz & Alois Stutzer, "undated". "Was erklärt die steigenden Managerlöhne? Ein Diskussionsbeitrag," IEW - Working Papers 081, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    18. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    19. Edward P. Lazear & Paul Oyer, 2012. "Personnel Economics [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    20. Oliver Hart, 2011. "Thinking about the Firm: A Review of Daniel Spulber's The Theory of the Firm," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 101-113, March.
    21. Kevin J. Stiroh, 2007. "Playing For Keeps: Pay And Performance In The Nba," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(1), pages 145-161, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    contract theory; informativeness principle; quasi-experiment; outcome bias; behavioural economics;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:syd:wpaper:2018-03. 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: Vanessa Holcombe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deusyau.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.