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The Incentive Effects of Leveling the Playing Field - An Empirical Analysis of Amateur Golf Tournaments

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  • Jörg Franke

Abstract

Leveling the playing field is an important policy instrument to guarantee an equitable competition among heterogeneous individuals. However, the incentive effects of those policies are usually not explicitly addressed in empirical studies. In this paper the performance in amateur golf tournaments is analyzed to gain insights into the incentive effects of those types of policies. The empirical analysis takes advantage of the fact that tournaments in amateur golf are of two distinctive types that apply different scoring rules: While one scoring rule is based on gross scores, i.e. the total number of strokes of a player, the second scoring rule is based on net scores where the total number of strokes is normalized with respect to the respective player's handicap. Performance comparisons of players that participated in both types of tournaments suggest that leveling the playing field, as in tournaments based on net score, has positive and significant performance effects.

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  • Jörg Franke, 2011. "The Incentive Effects of Leveling the Playing Field - An Empirical Analysis of Amateur Golf Tournaments," Post-Print hal-00670763, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00670763
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2010.537646
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00670763
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    1. Dahm, Matthias & Esteve-González, Patricia, 2018. "Affirmative action through extra prizes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 123-142.
    2. Jeanine Miklós-Thal & Hannes Ullrich, 2016. "Career Prospects and Effort Incentives: Evidence from Professional Soccer," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1645-1667, June.
    3. Sean P. Hargreaves Heap & Abhijit Ramalingam & Siddharth Ramalingam & Brock V. Stoddard, 2015. "‘Doggedness’ or ‘disengagement’? An experiment on the effect of inequality in endowment on behaviour in team competitions," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 13-08-R, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    4. 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.
    5. Jörg Franke, 2007. "Does Affirmative Action Reduce Effort Incentives? A Contest Game Analysis," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 711.07, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    6. March, Christoph & Sahm, Marco, 2017. "Asymmetric discouragement in asymmetric contests," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 23-27.
    7. Hargreaves Heap, Shaun P. & Ramalingam, Abhijit & Ramalingam, Siddharth & Stoddard, Brock V., 2015. "‘Doggedness’ or ‘disengagement’? An experiment on the effect of inequality in endowment on behaviour in team competitions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 80-93.
    8. 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.
    9. Jana Vyrastekova & Sander Onderstal & Pierre Koning, 2012. "Self-selection and the power of incentive schemes: an experimental study," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(32), pages 4211-4219, November.
    10. Derek J. Clark & Tore Nilssen, 2022. "Fatter or fitter? On rewarding and training in a contest," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 101-120, January.
    11. Rey Hernández-Julián & Christina Peters, 2022. "Why Try? The Superstar Effect in Academic Performance," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 147-165, January.
    12. Michael Babington & Sebastian J. Goerg & Carl Kitchens, 2020. "Do Tournaments With Superstars Encourage or Discourage Competition?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(1), pages 44-63, January.
    13. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Patricia Esteve‐González & Anwesha Mukherjee, 2023. "Heterogeneity, leveling the playing field, and affirmative action in contests," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(3), pages 924-974, January.
    14. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Shakun D. Mago, 2023. "Contests with revisions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(4), pages 915-954, September.
    15. Oberhelman Dennis & Galbreth Michael & Fry Timothy, 2013. "Equitable handicapping of scramble golf tournaments," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 9(4), pages 285-300, December.

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