Fooled by Performance Randomness: Overrewarding Luck

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gauriot, Romain; Page, Lionel
• 署名单位: New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi; University of Technology Sydney
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00783
• 发表日期: 2019-10
• 页码: 658-666
• 关键词: Moral hazard; BIAS

摘要

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 that landed on the goal posts. Using nonscoring 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.