IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/easeco/v38y2012i1p1-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tournament Chasing NASCAR Style: Driver Incentives in Stock Car Racing's Playoff Season

Author

Listed:
  • J Brian O'Roark

    (Department of Finance and Economics, Robert Morris University, 6001 University Blvd., Moon Township, PA 15108.)

  • William C Wood

    (Department of Economics, James Madison University.)

  • Benjamin Demblowski

    (Department of Economics and Legal Studies, Robert Morris University.)

Abstract

This paper applies tournament theory to NASCAR racing's playoff season, the Chase for the Cup. The consequences of a mixed tournament with the top 10 and lower-ranked drivers racing simultaneously are explored and tested. Using individual driver and race data, we empirically show that Chase races experience more accidents. In the lead up to the Chase, the relative position of drivers to the leader in terms of rank is more important in predicting accidents than the absolute position in terms of points. Once the Chase begins, contrary to tournament theory, the increase in accidents is spread across the subsets of drivers, and occurs without regard to the relative position of the drivers to the leaders of each subgroup.

Suggested Citation

  • J Brian O'Roark & William C Wood & Benjamin Demblowski, 2012. "Tournament Chasing NASCAR Style: Driver Incentives in Stock Car Racing's Playoff Season," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 38(1), pages 1-17.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:easeco:v:38:y:2012:i:1:p:1-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eej/journal/v38/n1/pdf/eej201048a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eej/journal/v38/n1/full/eej201048a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brad Humphreys & Bernd Frick, 2019. "Prize Structure and Performance: Evidence from NASCAR," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-13, October.
    2. Craig A. Depken II & Matthew Hood & Ernest King, 2017. "Consistency and Momentum in NASCAR," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(6), pages 601-621, August.
    3. David M. Yaskewich, 2017. "Heterogeneous Ability and Risk Taking in a Rank-Order Tournament," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(8), pages 803-830, December.
    4. Thieme, Lutz & Falk, Rüdiger, 2021. "Zur Entwicklung von Vergütungssystemen in deutschen Großsportvereinen," Working Papers of the European Institute for Socioeconomics 35, European Institute for Socioeconomics (EIS), Saarbrücken.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:easeco:v:38:y:2012:i:1:p:1-17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.