Brown, A. and Chowdhury, S.M. (2017) The hidden perils of affirmative action: Sabotage in handicap contests. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 133. pp. 273-284. ISSN 0167-2681
Abstract
Contests are ubiquitous in economic, organizational and political settings. Contest designers often use tools to make a contest among asymmetric contestants more even, in order to either elicit higher effort levels, or for ethical reasons. Handicapping – in which stronger participants are a priori weakened – is one successful tool that is widely used in sports, promotional tournaments and procurement auctions. In this study we show theoretically that participants may also increase their destructive effort, and sabotage their rivals’ performance, when handicapping is employed. We empirically verify this prediction using data on 19,635 U.K. horse-races in 2011 and 2012. Our results suggest that while a level field may be conducive to heightened positive effort in general, in a setting where both handicapping and sabotage are present it also lays the ground for greater destruction.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 Elsevier. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Sabotage; Contests; Contest design; Superstars; Handicapping; Horse racing |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Economics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 01 Jun 2023 14:26 |
Last Modified: | 02 Jun 2023 05:03 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier BV |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.11.009 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:199700 |