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Fooled by randomness: over-rewarding luck

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  • Gauriot, Romain
  • Page, Lionel

Abstract

We provide evidence of a violation of the informativeness principle whereby lucky successes are overly rewarded. We isolate a quasi-experimental situation where the success of an agent is as good as random. To do so, we use high quality data on football (soccer) matches and select shots on goal which landed on the goal posts. Using non scoring shots, taken from a similar location on the pitch, as counterfactuals to scoring shots, we estimate the causal effect of a lucky success (goal) on the evaluation of the player’s performance. We find clear evidence that luck is overly influencing managers’ decisions and evaluators’ ratings. Our results suggest that this phenomenon is likely to be widespread in economic organizations.

Suggested Citation

  • Gauriot, Romain & Page, Lionel, 2018. "Fooled by randomness: over-rewarding luck," Working Papers 2018-03, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:syd:wpaper:2018-03
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    Cited by:

    1. Colella, Fabrizio & Dalton, Patricio & Giusti, G., 2018. "You'll Never Walk Alone : The Effect of Moral Support on Performance," Other publications TiSEM 1dac53ca-9483-48f5-84b0-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Barry Reilly & Robert Witt, 2021. "The Effect of League Design on Spectator Attendance: A Regression Discontinuity Design Approach," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(5), pages 514-545, June.
    3. Anil Özdemir & Helmut Dietl & Giambattista Rossi & Robert Simmons, 2020. "Are Workers Rewarded for Inconsistent Performance?," Working Papers 386, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    4. Nisvan Erkal & Lata Gangadharan & Boon Han Koh, 2018. "By chance or by choice? Biased attribution of others’ outcomes," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 2040, The University of Melbourne.
    5. Raphael Flepp & Egon Franck, 2019. "The role of boards' misperceptions in the relation between managerial turnover and performance: Evidence from European football," Working Papers 380, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).

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    Keywords

    contract theory; informativeness principle; quasi-experiment; outcome bias; behavioural economics;
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