Taylor and Trogdon found evidence of shirking under some, but not all, draft lottery systems used in three different National Basketball Association (NBA) seasons. The authors use data from all NBA games played from 1977 to 2007 and a fixed effects model to control for unobservable team and season heterogeneity to extend this research. The authors find that NBA teams were more likely to intentionally lose games at the end of the regular season during the seasons where the incentives to finish last were the largest.
Ai, C. & Norton, E. ( 2003). Interaction terms in logit and probit models. Economics Letters, 80, 123-129.
2.
Balsdon, E., Fong, L., & Thayer, M. ( 2007). Corruption in college basketball? Evidence of tanking in postseason conference tournaments. Journal of Sports Economics , 8, 19-38.
3.
Berri, D.J. ( 2008). A simple measure of worker productivity in the National Basketball Association. In B. Humphreys & D. Howard (Eds.), The business of sport (Vol. 3, pp. 1-40). Westport, CT: Praeger .
4.
Borland, J., Chicu, M., & MacDonald, R. ( 2009). Do teams always lose to win? Performance incentives and the player draft in the Australian Football League. Journal of Sports Economics, 10, 451-484.
5.
Dietl, H., Lang, M., & Werner, S. ( 2009). Social welfare in sports leagues with profit-maximizing and/or win-maximizing clubs. Working Papers 0826, International Association of Sports Economists.
6.
Duggan, M., & Levitt, S. ( 2002). Winning isn’t everything: Corruption in Sumo wrestling . American Economic Review, 92, 1594-1607.
7.
Florke, C., & Ecker, M. ( 2003). NBA draft lottery probabilities. American Journal of Undergraduate Research, 2, 19-29.
8.
Frick, B. ( 2003). Contest theory and sport. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 19, 512-529.
9.
Goldpaper, S. ( 1989, October 5). Lottery redone to aid weak teams. New York Times. Retrieved December 16, 2009, from http://global.factiva.com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/ha/default.aspx
10.
Lazear, E.P., & Rosen, S. ( 1981). Rank-order tournaments as optimum labor contracts. Journal of Political Economy, 89, 841-864.
11.
Mason, D.S. ( 1999). What is the sports product and who buys it? The marketing of professional sports leagues. European Journal of Marketing , 33, 402-418.
12.
Parsons, C.A., Sulaeman, J., Yates, M., & Hamermesh, D.S. (2007). Strike three: Umpires’ demand for discrimination. IZA Discussion Paper No. 3899. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1318858
13.
Penrice, S.G. ( 1995). Applying elementary probability theory to the NBA draft lottery. SIAM Review, 37, 598-602.
14.
Preston, I., & Szymanski, S. ( 2003). Cheating in contests. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 19, 612-624.
15.
Price, J., Remer, M., & Stone, D.F. ( 2009). Sub-perfect game: Profitable biases of NBA referees, Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1377964
16.
Price, J., & Wolfers, J. ( 2007). Racial discrimination among NBA referees. NBER Working Papers 13206, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc .
17.
Quinn, K.G. ( 2008). Player drafts in the major North American sports leagues . In B. Humphreys & D. Howard (Eds.), The business of sport (Vol. 3, pp. 191-218). Westport, CT: Praeger.
18.
Rottenberg, S. ( 1956). The baseball players’ labor market. Journal of Political Economy, 64, 242-260.
19.
Soebbing, B.P., & Mason, D. S. (2009). Managing legitimacy and uncertainty in professional team sport: The NBA’s draft lottery. Team Performance Management, 15, 141-157.
20.
Taylor, B., & Trogdon, J. ( 2002). Losing to win: Tournament incentives in the National Basketball Association. Journal of Labor Economics, 20, 23-41.
21.
The Toronto Star. (1993, June 14). Commissioner Stern sets record straight. Retrieved December 16, 2009, from http://global.factiva.com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/ha/default.aspx
22.
Zitzewitz, E. ( 2006). Nationalism in winter sports judging and its lessons for organizational decision making. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 15, 67-99.