nep-spo New Economics Papers
on Sports and Economics
Issue of 2017‒11‒05
two papers chosen by
João Carlos Correia Leitão
Universidade da Beira Interior

  1. Sequential Round-Robin Tournaments with Multiple Prizes By Christoph Laica; Arne Lauber; Marco Sahm
  2. Are Sequential Round-Robin Tournaments Discriminatory? By Sahm, Marco

  1. By: Christoph Laica; Arne Lauber; Marco Sahm
    Abstract: We examine the fairness and intensity of sequential round-robin tournaments with multiple prizes. With three symmetric players and two prizes, the tournament is completely fair if and only if the second prize is valued half of the first prize, regardless of whether matches are organized as Tullock contests or as allpay auctions. For second prizes different from half of the first prize, three-player tournaments with matches organized as Tullock contests are usually fairer than tournaments with matches organized as all-pay auctions. However, unless the second prize is very small, they are less intense in the sense that players exert less ex-ante expected aggregate effort per unit of prize money. Moreover, we specify how the relative size of the second prize influences the extent and the direction of discrimination as well as the intensity of three-player tournaments. Finally, we show that there is no prize structure for which sequential round-robin tournaments with four symmetric players are completely fair in general.
    Keywords: round-robin tournament, multiple prizes, fairness, intensity, Tullock contest, all-pay auction
    JEL: C72 D72
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6685&r=spo
  2. By: Sahm, Marco
    Abstract: I examine sequential round-robin tournaments with three and four symmetric players which are matched once with each other. If the matches are organized as Tullock contests (all-pay auctions), the tournament is almost fair (highly discriminatory): Subject to the position of their matches in the sequence of the tournament, the differences in players’ ex ante winning probabilities and expected payoffs are small (large). Discrepancy results from a higher discriminating power of the all-pay auction.
    JEL: C72 D72
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc17:168113&r=spo

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