The economics of individual behavior in competitive environments : empirical evidence from real-life tournaments

The present thesis examines if and to what extent microeconomic theory can explain the observable behavior of individuals in competitive environments. On the basis of self-compiled datasets from (professional) sports competitions as well as a widely broadcasted TV quiz-show two research questions are primarily addressed. In the first part of this thesis I aim to answer the question which impact the individual performance has on personal career development (and whether there are other factors which might influence individual success in a positive or negative way). The descriptive results and econometric analyses suggest that, among others, the career duration of professional ski jumpers is not solely determined by their individual performance, but also depends on former achievements and each athletes nationality. The latter can be explained by the fact that the competitive pressure which sometimes varies dramatically across the different national federations has a significant impact on individual nomination probabilities. Moreover, it can be shown that the career success of German football referees is heavily impacted by their long-term performance. However, neither exceptionally good nor very poor performances in the short term have an impact on a referees subsequent nomination. In the second part of this thesis I examine to what extent the observable behavioral differences of men and women can be explained by e.g. differences in risk preferences, incentive structures and/or socialization conditions. For this purpose, I observe and analyze the behavior of highly self-selected individuals in different competitive environments.