IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zrh/wpaper/400.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Replication: Do Coaches Stick With What Barely Worked? Evidence of Outcome Bias in Professional Sports

Author

Listed:
  • Pascal Flurin Meier

    (Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich)

  • Raphael Flepp

    (Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich)

  • Egon Franck

    (Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich)

Abstract

Consistent with outcome bias, we replicate the finding of Lefgren et al. (2015) showing that professional basketball coaches in the NBA discontinuously change their starting lineup more often after narrow losses than after narrow wins, even though this outcome is conditionally uninformative. As our paper shows, this pattern is not restricted to the NBA; we find evidence of outcome bias in the top women’s professional basketball league and college basketball. Finally, we show that outcome bias in coaching decisions generalizes to the National Football League (NFL). We conclude that outcome bias is credible and robust, although it has weakened over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Pascal Flurin Meier & Raphael Flepp & Egon Franck, 2023. "Replication: Do Coaches Stick With What Barely Worked? Evidence of Outcome Bias in Professional Sports," Working Papers 400, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    • Handle: RePEc:zrh:wpaper:400
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/zrh/wpaper/400_IBW_full.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Max H. Farrell & Rocío Titiunik, 2019. "Regression Discontinuity Designs Using Covariates," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(3), pages 442-451, July.
    2. Raphael Flepp & Pascal Flurin Meier, 2024. "Struck by Luck: Noisy Capability Cues and CEO Dismissal," Working Papers 389, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    3. Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1859-1887.
    4. Matias D. Cattaneo & Nicolas Idrobo & Rocio Titiunik, 2019. "A Practical Introduction to Regression Discontinuity Designs: Foundations," Papers 1911.09511, arXiv.org.
    5. Kausel, Edgar E. & Ventura, Santiago & Rodríguez, Arturo, 2019. "Outcome bias in subjective ratings of performance: Evidence from the (football) field," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PB).
    6. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    7. Romain Gauriot & Lionel Page, 2019. "Fooled by Performance Randomness: Overrewarding Luck," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(4), pages 658-666, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ricardo Manuel Santos, 2024. "Modelling Strategies in Sports," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 52(2), pages 57-66, September.

    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. Meier, Pascal Flurin & Flepp, Raphael & Meier, Philippe & Franck, Egon, 2022. "Outcome bias in self-evaluations: Quasi-experimental field evidence from Swiss driving license exams," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 292-309.
    2. Raphael Flepp & Pascal Flurin Meier, 2024. "Struck by Luck: Noisy Capability Cues and CEO Dismissal," Working Papers 389, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    3. Pascal Flurin Meier & Raphael Flepp & Philippe Meier & Egon Franck, 2022. "Outcome Bias in Self-evaluations: Quasi-experimental Field Evidence of Swiss Driving License Exams," Working Papers 392, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    4. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    5. Cuong Viet Nguyen & Finn Tarp, 2023. "Cash Transfers and Labor Supply: New Evidence on Impacts and Mechanisms," DERG working paper series 23-18, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Development Economics Research Group (DERG).
    6. Likai Chen & Georg Keilbar & Liangjun Su & Weining Wang, 2023. "Inference on many jumps in nonparametric panel regression models," Papers 2312.01162, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    7. Kettlewell, Nathan & Siminski, Peter, 2020. "Optimal Model Selection in RDD and Related Settings Using Placebo Zones," IZA Discussion Papers 13639, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Pascal Flurin Meier & Raphael Flepp & Egon Franck, 2022. "Are Expectations Misled by Chance? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Financial Analysts," Working Papers 396, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    9. Akbulut-Yuksel, Mevlude & Boulatoff, Catherine, 2021. "The effects of a green nudge on municipal solid waste: Evidence from a clear bag policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    10. Pasquini, Ricardo A., 2021. "Effects of regulating the brokerage commission in the rental market: Evidence from Buenos Aires," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    11. Gabriele Mari, 2024. "Less for more? Cuts to child benefits, family adjustments, and long-run child outcomes in larger families," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(2), pages 1-27, June.
    12. Carolina Caetano & Gregorio Caetano & Juan Carlos Escanciano, 2023. "Regression discontinuity design with multivalued treatments," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(6), pages 840-856, September.
    13. 'Agoston Reguly, 2021. "Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Papers 2106.11640, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2021.
    14. Masayuki Sawada & Takuya Ishihara & Daisuke Kurisu & Yasumasa Matsuda, 2024. "Local-Polynomial Estimation for Multivariate Regression Discontinuity Designs," Papers 2402.08941, arXiv.org.
    15. Claudia Noack & Tomasz Olma & Christoph Rothe, 2021. "Flexible Covariate Adjustments in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Papers 2107.07942, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    16. Zhuang Hao & Huihui Cheng & Till Bärnighausen & Simiao Chen, 2024. "The effects of parental retirement on adult children's health: Evidence from China," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 12-20, January.
    17. Meier, Pascal Flurin & Flepp, Raphael & Franck, Egon, 2023. "Replication: Do coaches stick with what barely worked? Evidence of outcome bias in sports," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    18. Ay, Jean-Sauveur & Le Gallo, Julie, 2021. "The Signaling Values of Nested Wine Names," Working Papers 321851, American Association of Wine Economists.
    19. Raphael Flepp & Oliver Merz & Egon Franck, 2024. "When the league table lies: Does outcome bias lead to informationally inefficient markets?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(1), pages 414-429, January.
    20. Balila Acurio & Alessandro Tomarchio, 2024. "The Effects of Business Credit Support Programs: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," IHEID Working Papers 20-2024, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Outcome bias; Strategy revision; Regression discontinuity design; Replication;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • Z20 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zrh:wpaper:400. 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: Daniela Koller (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibuzhch.html .

    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.