Does Success Breed Success? a Quasi-Experiment on Strategic Momentum in Dynamic Contests
利用职业网球比赛中球触线附近的随机事件作为准实验,研究发现男性选手赢下一分后赢得下一分的概率显著提高,支持了激励不对称导致的势头效应,但女性选手未发现此效应。
Abstract We study how agents adapt their behaviour to variations of incentives in dynamic contests. We investigate a real dynamic contest with large stakes: professional tennis matches. Situations in which balls bounce very close to the court’s lines are used as the setting of a quasi-experiment providing random variations in winning probability. We find evidence of a momentum effect for men whereby winning a point has a positive causal impact on the probability to win the next one. This behaviour is compatible with a reaction to the asymmetry of incentives between leaders and followers. We do not find momentum for women.