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Choosing “Flawed” aggregation rules: The benefit of social choice violations in a league that values competitive balance

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  • Boudreau, James W.
  • Sanders, Shane

Abstract

Revealed demand for competitive balance in sports leagues is well-established across many settings. The present study considers the role of aggregation rules (e.g., those that use aggregate individual performances to establish a set of team scores) in sports and other competitive environments. We find that competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome are minimized for aggregation rules that preserve the social choice principles of transitivity and independence. A league that values competitive balance should therefore prefer aggregation rules that violate these social choice principles. Such a preference for ambiguity may not be costless, however, as it may entail important distributional implications for teams, managers, and coaches.

Suggested Citation

  • Boudreau, James W. & Sanders, Shane, 2015. "Choosing “Flawed” aggregation rules: The benefit of social choice violations in a league that values competitive balance," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 106-108.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:137:y:2015:i:c:p:106-108
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2015.10.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Walter C. Neale, 1964. "The Peculiar Economics of Professional Sports," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 78(1), pages 1-14.
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    3. Boudreau, James & Ehrlich, Justin & Sanders, Shane & Winn, Adam, 2014. "Social choice violations in rank sum scoring: A formalization of conditions and corrective probability computations," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 20-29.
    4. Stefan Szymanski, 2010. "The Economic Design of Sporting Contests," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Comparative Economics of Sport, chapter 1, pages 1-78, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Franklin G. Mixon Jr. & Ernest W. King, 2012. "Social Choice Theory in 10,000 Meters: Examining Independence and Transitivity in the Ncaa Cross-Country Championships," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 57(1), pages 32-41, May.
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    7. Yang-Ming Chang & Joel Potter & Shane Sanders, 2007. "The Fate Of Disputed Territories: An Economic Analysis," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 183-200.
    8. Thomas Hammond, 2007. "Rank injustice?: How the scoring method for cross-country running competitions violates major social choice principles," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 133(3), pages 359-375, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Shane Sanders & Justin Ehrlich & James Boudreau, 2017. "Cycles in Team Tennis and Other Paired-Element Contests," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-14, June.
    2. Kurt S. Riedel, 2019. "Combinatorial Models of Cross-Country Dual Meets: What is a Big Victory?," Papers 1911.05044, arXiv.org.
    3. Diana Cheng & Peter Coughlin, 2017. "Using equations from power indices to analyze figure skating teams," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 170(3), pages 231-251, March.
    4. James Boudreau & Justin Ehrlich & Mian Farrukh Raza & Shane Sanders, 2018. "The likelihood of social choice violations in rank sum scoring: algorithms and evidence from NCAA cross country running," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 219-238, March.

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