Risk Taking and Performance in Multistage Tournaments: Evidence from Weightlifting Competitions 1
Year: 2009
Type: book
Abstract: In this paper we analyze the impact of interim ranking on the risk taking and performance behaviour of professional athletes participating in international weightlifting competitions. Weightlifting competitions are multistage tournaments. They are unique in that the athletes must announce in advance the amount they intend to lift at each stage, thus allowing us to quantify the riskiness of their choices. We present three key findings. First, athletes take greater risks as they approach the top of the ranking, where incentives to take risk are the highest. A move from tenth to first place implies an average 4 percent increase in the announced weight and, consequently, a 9 percent decrease in the likelihood of success. Second, athletes systematically underperform when ranked closer to the top, notwithstanding higher incentives to exert effort. An athlete in first place is more than 30 percent less likely to lift the declared weight than an athlete in tenth place. Finally, after having carefully controlled for unobserved heterogeneity, we find no evidence for gender-based differences in response to changes in ranking or the competitiveness of the game.
Authors: Christos Genakos, Mario Pagliero
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2111937820