Willingness to fight on: Environmental quality in dynamic contests

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Liu, Haoming; Lu, Jingfeng; Salvo, Alberto
• 署名单位: National University of Singapore
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12435
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 189-239
• 关键词: rank-order tournaments; psychological momentum; air-pollution; performance; COMPETITION; weather; game

摘要

We show that the prevalence of prolonged tennis contests drops sharply when the ambient environment deteriorates through heat or pollution. We develop a multi-battle dynamic model to investigate how the disutility from a protracted competition shapes agents' willingness to fight on. Our theory predicts that a poor environment amplifies the momentum of a competitor's head start. We show how model primitives including preferences for environmental amenities can be inferred from battle-to-battle transition probabilities. We find that heat and pollution affect incentives to compete strategically. In a contest between equally able rivals at the median prize of $15,100, the value of a head start is $130-370 higher in a degraded environment compared with a climate-controlled one.