Analyzing strategies in tournaments can be difficult to analyze given data limitations. We analyze golfers' risk taking strategies with a unique data-set from ten seasons of professional golf tournaments and present three major findings. First, as the value of taking on a risk rises, golfers...

Awarding a grand prize to the player who wins most often in a series of contests links the contests together and makes incentives in the current contest depend upon past performance. A lucky player who wins early faces relatively stronger incentives to exert effort because of his early success....

Prospect theory predicts that loss averse agents who fear they will not reach their reference utility level are more apt to adopt risky strategies to avoid that painful possibility compared to agents who are more sure of their relative standing. This paper tests this theory with data from...

The rights to the annual NCAA men’s basketball tournament are the most valuable asset that the organization possesses. Revenues earned from the event account for about 80% of the organization’s operating budget. Despite the event’s unique nature, demand for its product has flagged. To...