Tournament incentives and performance: Evidence from the WNBA
Abstract
Players entering the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) are allocated to teams based on a draft where lower performing teams in the regular season earn the highest odds of selecting the best players, creating an incentive for teams to lose games. Using data from the 2000–2019 seasons, results indicate that WNBA teams are more likely to lose after they have been eliminated from postseason playoffs regardless of the gender of the coach or general manager. Evidence of tanking is concentrated in seasons after the WNBA made a draft lottery change in 2015, which was intended to reduce tanking.
Faculty Members
- Brian Hill - Department of Economics and Finance Salisbury University Salisbury Maryland USA
Themes
- performance incentives
- tanking in sports
- team performance dynamics
- draft lottery impact
Categories
- Economics
- Business administration and management nec
- Sociology, general
- Social sciences
- Business
- Economics, general
- Sociology, demography, and population studies nec
- Public policy analysis, general
- Business administration and management
- Public policy analysis
- Applied economics
- Sociology, demography, and population studies