IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v5y2004i1p67-86.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Performance-Enhancing Drug Game

Author

Listed:
  • Kjetil K. Haugen

Abstract

Antidoping work consumes huge economic resources. Formal understanding of economic forces that drive athletes to use drugs is lacking. Consequently, work on this phenomenon may be of interest to the sports community, especially the antidoping community. This study uses simple game theory to analyze simple two-player games representing various situations of sports activity. The basic findings are the existence of Nash equilibria forcing agents to use drugs that are very often of the prisoner’s dilemma type, and antidoping work with small or no effects may hence lead to Pareto-worsened situations. This study also shows that antidoping activity should be differentiated between sports activities. Finally, somediscussions on alternative regulatory policies conclude that improved testing may not be the most efficient way to fight doping—if the fight against doping is as important as sports officials like to tell us.

Suggested Citation

  • Kjetil K. Haugen, 2004. "The Performance-Enhancing Drug Game," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 5(1), pages 67-86, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:5:y:2004:i:1:p:67-86
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002503251712
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002503251712
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1527002503251712?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicolas EBER & Jacques THÉPOT, 1999. "Doping in Sport and Competition Design," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 1999044, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    2. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    3. Berentsen, Aleksander, 2002. "The economics of doping," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 109-127, March.
    4. Radner, Roy, 1980. "Collusive behavior in noncooperative epsilon-equilibria of oligopolies with long but finite lives," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 136-154, April.
    5. Michael Spence, 1973. "Job Market Signaling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 87(3), pages 355-374.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wu, Qin & Bayer, Ralph-C & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2020. "Conditional Pension Funds to Combat Cheating in Sporting Contests: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    2. Müller, Daniel, 2013. "The Doping Threshold in Sport Contests," Working papers 2013/05, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    3. Berno Buechel & Eike Emrich & Stefanie Pohlkamp, 2016. "Nobody’s Innocent," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 17(8), pages 767-789, December.
    4. Clément Carbonnier, 2023. "Welfare Economics and Neoliberalism: Interpreting the ideal type of perfect competition general equilibrium," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-04062786, HAL.
    5. Francis, Bill B. & Samuel, Gilna & Wu, Qiang, 2023. "The impact of short selling on dividend smoothing," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    6. Subhasish Dugar & Arnab Mitra, 2016. "Bertrand Competition With Asymmetric Marginal Costs," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(3), pages 1631-1647, July.
    7. Wladimir Andreff, 2016. "Chapter X: The Tour de France: a success story in spite of competitive imbalance and doping," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01279855, HAL.
    8. Borenstein, Severin & Rose, Nancy L, 1994. "Competition and Price Dispersion in the U.S. Airline Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 653-683, August.
    9. Nicolas Eber, 2012. "Doping and Anti-doping Measures," Chapters, in: Wolfgang Maennig & Andrew Zimbalist (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Mega Sporting Events, chapter 12, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Jean J. Gabszewicz & Jacques-François Thisse, 2000. "Microeconomic theories of imperfect competition," Cahiers d'Économie Politique, Programme National Persée, vol. 37(1), pages 47-99.
    11. Dmitry Ryvkin, 2013. "Contests With Doping," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(3), pages 253-275, June.
    12. Guido Candela & Massimiliano Castellani & Pierpaolo Pattitoni, 2012. "Tribal art market: signs and signals," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 36(4), pages 289-308, November.
    13. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, January.
    14. Daniel Westmattelmann & Marius Sprenger & Sascha Hokamp & Gerhard Schewe, 2020. "Money matters: The impact of prize money on doping behaviour," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 688-703, October.
    15. Sebastian Bervoets & Bruno Decreuse & Mathieu Faure, 2014. "A Renewed Analysis of Cheating in Contests: Theory and Evidence from Recovery Doping," AMSE Working Papers 1441, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised Jun 2015.
    16. Kräkel, Matthias, 2006. "Doping and Cheating in Contest-Like Situations," IZA Discussion Papers 2059, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Pfeuffer, Wolfgang, 2006. "Religion as a Seed Crystal for Altruistic Cooperation," Munich Dissertations in Economics 5788, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    18. Kershen Huang & Chenguang Shang & Chi Zhang, 2021. "Working hard for long‐distance relationships: Geographic proximity and relationship‐specific investments," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(4), pages 985-1011, December.
    19. M. Martin Boyer & Hernán Ortiz‐Molina, 2008. "Career Concerns of Top Executives, Managerial Ownership and CEO Succession," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 178-193, May.
    20. Mattias K. Polborn, 2008. "Endogenous Categorization in Insurance," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(6), pages 1095-1113, December.

    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:sae:jospec:v:5:y:2004:i:1:p:67-86. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.