Individual contribution in team contests

This paper empirically analyzes team effects in multiple pairwise battles, where players from two rival teams compete sequentially. Using international squash tournaments as a randomized natural experiment, we show that winning the first battle significantly increases the probability of winning the subsequent one. This result contradicts recent theoretical literature on multi-battle team contests, according to which outcomes of past confrontations should not affect the present ones. Furthermore, we derive testable predictions from a theoretical model in order to identify the effect at play. We provide compelling evidence of an individual contribution effect: players not only benefit from their team’s win, but also value the fact of being individually – even partly – responsible for their team’s collective success. Such an effect is of prime importance to understanding why individuals can make a significant effort when offered collective-based incentives.