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Tournament performance and “Agency” problems: An empirical investigation of “March madness”

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  • James McClure
  • Lee Spector

Abstract

Tournaments have long been used as a resource allocation device. Regardless of the margin of victory, a tournament's champion is typically rewarded far more handsomely than are its losers. For this reason, a tournament can generally be expected to elicit spectacular levels of performance from a group of competitors; performances in professional golf tournaments are an example. Surprisingly, the analysis in this paper indicates the existence of no significant relationship between the rewards and performances of participants in the NCAA basketball tournament. To explain this finding we allude to the classic principal-agent problem.
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  • James McClure & Lee Spector, 1997. "Tournament performance and “Agency” problems: An empirical investigation of “March madness”," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 21(1), pages 61-68, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jecfin:v:21:y:1997:i:1:p:61-68
    DOI: 10.1007/BF02929023
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Beck A. Taylor & Justin G. Trogdon, 2002. "Losing to Win: Tournament Incentives in the National Basketball Association," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 23-41, January.
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    3. Ed Balsdon & Lesley Fong & Mark A. Thayer, 2007. "Corruption in College Basketball? Evidence of Tanking in Postseason Conference Tournaments," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(1), pages 19-38, February.

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