Does Losing Lead to Winning? An Empirical Analysis for Four Sports

Management Science, Vol. 69, No. 1, pp. 513-532, January 2023

62 Pages Posted: 22 Sep 2020 Last revised: 29 Jan 2023

See all articles by Bouke Klein Teeselink

Bouke Klein Teeselink

King's College London; Yale School of Management

Martijn J. van den Assem

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Dennie van Dolder

University of Essex - Department of Economics

Date Written: December 1, 2021

Abstract

Berger and Pope (2011) show that being slightly behind increases the likelihood of winning in professional (NBA) and collegiate (NCAA) basketball. We extend their analysis to large samples of Australian football, American football, and rugby matches, but find no evidence of such an effect for these three sports. When we revisit the phenomenon for basketball, we only find supportive evidence for NBA matches from the period analyzed in Berger and Pope. There is no significant effect for NBA matches from outside this sample period, for NCAA matches, or for matches from the Women's NBA. High-powered meta-analyses across the different sports and competitions do not reject the null hypothesis of no effect of being slightly behind on winning. The confidence intervals suggest that the true effect, if existent at all, is likely relatively small.

Keywords: competition, sports, motivation, performance, regression discontinuity

JEL Classification: D01, D91, Z20

Suggested Citation

Klein Teeselink, Bouke and van den Assem, Martijn J. and van Dolder, Dennie, Does Losing Lead to Winning? An Empirical Analysis for Four Sports (December 1, 2021). Management Science, Vol. 69, No. 1, pp. 513-532, January 2023, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3669174 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3669174

Bouke Klein Teeselink (Contact Author)

King's College London ( email )

Strand Building
London
United Kingdom

Yale School of Management ( email )

165 Whitney Ave
New Haven, CT 06511

Martijn J. Van den Assem

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam ( email )

De Boelelaan 1105
Amsterdam, 1081HV
Netherlands

Dennie Van Dolder

University of Essex - Department of Economics ( email )

Wivenhoe Park
Colchester CO4 3SQ
United Kingdom

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
456
Abstract Views
2,451
Rank
125,465
PlumX Metrics