IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v137y2015icp106-108.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Choosing “Flawed” aggregation rules: The benefit of social choice violations in a league that values competitive balance

Author

Listed:
  • Boudreau, James W.
  • Sanders, Shane

Abstract

Revealed demand for competitive balance in sports leagues is well-established across many settings. The present study considers the role of aggregation rules (e.g., those that use aggregate individual performances to establish a set of team scores) in sports and other competitive environments. We find that competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome are minimized for aggregation rules that preserve the social choice principles of transitivity and independence. A league that values competitive balance should therefore prefer aggregation rules that violate these social choice principles. Such a preference for ambiguity may not be costless, however, as it may entail important distributional implications for teams, managers, and coaches.

Suggested Citation

  • Boudreau, James W. & Sanders, Shane, 2015. "Choosing “Flawed” aggregation rules: The benefit of social choice violations in a league that values competitive balance," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 106-108.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:137:y:2015:i:c:p:106-108
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2015.10.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176515004036
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2015.10.001?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Walter C. Neale, 1964. "The Peculiar Economics of Professional Sports," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 78(1), pages 1-14.
    2. Simon Rottenberg, 1956. "The Baseball Players' Labor Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(3), pages 242-242.
    3. Boudreau, James & Ehrlich, Justin & Sanders, Shane & Winn, Adam, 2014. "Social choice violations in rank sum scoring: A formalization of conditions and corrective probability computations," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 20-29.
    4. 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.
    5. Franklin G. Mixon Jr. & Ernest W. King, 2012. "Social Choice Theory in 10,000 Meters: Examining Independence and Transitivity in the Ncaa Cross-Country Championships," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 57(1), pages 32-41, May.
    6. Rodney Fort & James Quirk, 1995. "Cross-subsidization, Incentives, and Outcomes in Professional Team Sports Leagues," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 1265-1299, September.
    7. Yang-Ming Chang & Joel Potter & Shane Sanders, 2007. "The Fate Of Disputed Territories: An Economic Analysis," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 183-200.
    8. Thomas Hammond, 2007. "Rank injustice?: How the scoring method for cross-country running competitions violates major social choice principles," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 133(3), pages 359-375, December.
    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. Diana Cheng & Peter Coughlin, 2017. "Using equations from power indices to analyze figure skating teams," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 170(3), pages 231-251, March.
    2. Shane Sanders & Justin Ehrlich & James Boudreau, 2017. "Cycles in Team Tennis and Other Paired-Element Contests," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-14, June.
    3. Kurt S. Riedel, 2019. "Combinatorial Models of Cross-Country Dual Meets: What is a Big Victory?," Papers 1911.05044, arXiv.org.
    4. James Boudreau & Justin Ehrlich & Mian Farrukh Raza & Shane Sanders, 2018. "The likelihood of social choice violations in rank sum scoring: algorithms and evidence from NCAA cross country running," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 219-238, March.

    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. Kelly Goossens, 2006. "Competitive balance in european football: comparison by adapting measures: national measure of seasonal imbalance and Top 3," Rivista di Diritto ed Economia dello Sport, Centro di diritto e business dello Sport, vol. 2(2), pages 77-122, Dicembre.
    3. 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.
    4. 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).
    5. 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).
    6. Dietl Helmut M & Lang Markus & Rathke Alexander, 2009. "The Effect of Salary Caps in Professional Team Sports on Social Welfare," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-23, April.
    7. 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.
    8. Trung Minh Dang & Ross Booth & Robert Brooks & Adi Schnytzer, 2015. "Do TV Viewers Value Uncertainty of Outcome? Evidence from the Australian Football League," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 91(295), pages 523-535, December.
    9. Pedro Garcia-del-Barrio & J. James Reade, 2022. "Does certainty on the winner diminish the interest in sport competitions? The case of formula one," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 1059-1079, August.
    10. Allen R. Sanderson & John J. Siegfried, 2003. "Thinking about Competitive Balance," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(4), pages 255-279, November.
    11. Nicolas Scelles & Michel Desbordes & Christophe Durand, 2011. "Marketing in sport leagues: optimising the product design. Intra-championship competitive intensity in French football "Ligue 1" and basketball "Pro A"," Post-Print halshs-02110756, HAL.
    12. 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.
    13. Wladimir Andreff, 2009. "Équilibre compétitif et contrainte budgétaire dans une ligue de sport professionnel," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 60(3), pages 591-633.
    14. Stefan Szymanski, 2004. "Professional Team Sports Are Only a Game," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 5(2), pages 111-126, May.
    15. Stefan Szymanski & Tommaso M. Valletti, 2010. "Promotion and Relegation in Sporting Contests," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Comparative Economics of Sport, chapter 6, pages 198-228, Palgrave Macmillan.
    16. Matthieu Llorca & Thierry Teste, 2016. "Dépenses salariales et performance dans l’industrie du football," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(2), pages 125-145.
    17. Scelles, Nicolas (Сели, Николя) & Duran, Christophe (Дюра, Кристоф) & Bonnal, Liliane (Бонналь, Лилиан) & Goyeau, Daniel (Гойюс, Даниэль) & Andreff, Wladimir (Андрефф, Владимир), 2016. "Do all sporting prizes have a significant positive impact on attendance in a European national football league? Competitive intensity in the French Ligue 1 [Действительно Ли Все Спортивные Призы Ок," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 3, pages 82-107, June.
    18. Dietl Helmut M & Duschl Tobias & Lang Markus, 2011. "Executive Pay Regulation: What Regulators, Shareholders, and Managers Can Learn from Major Sports Leagues," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-32, August.
    19. Helmut Dietl & Egon Franck & Markus Lang & Alexander Rathke, 2008. "Revenue Sharing, Reserve Clause and Salary Caps in Professional Team Sports Leagues," Working Papers 0026, University of Zurich, Center for Research in Sports Administration (CRSA), revised 2009.
    20. Kevin Alavy & Alison Gaskell & Stephanie Leach & Stefan Szymanski, 2010. "On the Edge of Your Seat: Demand for Football on Television and the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis," International Journal of Sport Finance, Fitness Information Technology, vol. 5(2), pages 75-95, May.

    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:eee:ecolet:v:137:y:2015:i:c:p:106-108. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.