Performing best when it matters most: Evidence from professional tennis

González‐Díaz, Julio; Gossner, Olivier; Rogers, Brian W.

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2012.09.021

“…12 Consider a scenario where e §ort expended by a player in the Örst stage ináuences his marginal cost of e §ort in the Önal stage. 13 We can rewrite player 1ís Önal-stage payo § as…”

Section: E §Ort Spillovermentioning

confidence: 99%

Selecting the Best? Spillover and Shadows in Elimination Tournaments

Brown

¹

,

Minor

²

2011

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We consider how past, current, and future competition within an elimination tournament a §ect the probability that the stronger player wins. We present a two-stage model that yields the following main results: (1) a shadow e §ectóthe stronger the expected future competitor, the lower the probability that the stronger player wins in the current stage and (2) an e §ort spillover e §ectóprevious e §ort reduces the probability that the stronger player wins in the current stage. We test our theory predictions using data from high-stakes tournaments. Empirical results suggest that shadow and spillover e §ects ináuence match outcomes and have been already been priced into betting markets.

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“…First, it provides a unique opportunity to observe and measure performance as a function of variables such as heterogeneity in abilities and prizes. Second, an unambiguous definition of the importance of each game can be derived according to the tennis scoring system, as based on an estimate of the impact of the game on the probability of winning the match (Klaassen and Magnus, 2001;González-Díaz, Gossner and Rogers, 2012;Paserman, 2010). The fact that there is a clear winner of each point, game, set and 3 In the data section, we justify why we use only the first set of each match.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Choking under pressure and gender: Evidence from professional tennis

Cohen-Zada

¹

,

Krumer

²

,

Rosenboim

³

et al. 2017

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Choking under Pressure and Gender: Evidence from Professional Tennis februAry 2017Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

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“…We now relax this constraint by allowing for individual heterogeneity in optimal effort assignment. In other words, we now consider the heterogeneity in individuals' critical ability, as shown by González-Díaz et al (2012) about tennismen. To do so, we estimate for each individual which initial stock of efforts, between 10 and 50, fits the best his distance to the target throughout the game, with a linear model and robust standard errors.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, González-Díaz et al (2012) coined the concept of critical ability that focuses on the capacity of an agent to adapt his performance to the size of the stake. The authors insist in particular on the individual heterogeneity in critical ability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Precisely, we retain the notion of critical ability as the capacity for a player to focus his efforts on the most important tasks, but we differ from González-Díaz et al (2012) in that we develop a different notion of importance. We consider a situation in which individuals have a stock of exhaustible efforts that they can use to increase performance only for one state each, and they have to decide how to allocate them throughout the successive states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Doing Your Best When Stakes are High? Theory and Experimental Evidence

Houy

¹

,

Nicolai

²

,

Villeval

³

2016

SSRN Journal

0

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I EIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Achieving an ambitious goal frequently requires succeeding in a sequence of intermediary tasks, some being critical for the final outcome, and others not. Individuals are not always able to provide a level of effort sufficient to guarantee success in all the intermediary tasks. The ability to manage effort throughout the sequence of tasks is therefore critical. In this paper we propose a criterion that defines the importance of a task and that identifies how an individual should optimally allocate a limited stock of exhaustible efforts over tasks. We test this importance criterion in a laboratory experiment that reproduces the main features of a tennis match. We show that our importance criterion is able to predict the individuals' performance and it outperforms the Morris importance criterion that defines the importance of a point in terms of its impact on the probability to achieve the final outcome. We also find no evidence of choking under pressure and stress, as proxied by electrophysiological measures.JEL Classification: C72, C92, D81

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Performing best when it matters most: Evidence from professional tennis

Cited by 66 publications

References 14 publications

Selecting the Best? Spillover and Shadows in Elimination Tournaments

Selecting the Best? Spillover and Shadows in Elimination Tournaments

Choking under pressure and gender: Evidence from professional tennis

Doing Your Best When Stakes are High? Theory and Experimental Evidence

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