Game, set, and match: Do women and men perform differently in competitive situations?

This paper analyzes potential gender differences in competitive environments using a sample of over 100,000 professional tennis matches. Focusing on two phenomena of the labor and sports economics literature, we find robust evidence for (i) the hot-hand effect (an additional win in the most recent ten matches raises the likelihood of winning by 3.1 to 3.3 percent) and (ii) the clutch-player effect, as top players are excelling in Grand Slam tournaments, the most important events. Overall, we find virtually no gender differences for the hot-hand effect and only minor distinctions for the clutch-player effect

Good girl, bad boy: Corrupt behavior in professional tennis

This paper identifies matches on the male and female professional tennis tours in which one player faces a high payoff from being “on the bubble” of direct entry into one of the lucrative Grand Slam tournaments, while their opposition does not. Analyzing over 378,000 matches provides strong evidence for corrupt behavior on the men’s tour, as bubble players are substantially more likely to beat better ranked opponents when a win is desperately needed. However, we find no such evidence on the women’s tour. These results prevail throughout a series of extensions and robustness checks, highlighting gender differences regarding corrupt and unethical behavior, but also concerning collusion. We especially find evidence for collusion once monetary incentives are further increased. Finally, the market for sports betting does not seem to be aware of this phenomenon, suggesting a market imperfection and further confirming our suspicion of irregular activities in men’s tennis

Gender in Jeopardy!: The Role of Opponent Gender in High-Stakes Competition

Using 4,279 episodes of the popular US game show Jeopardy!, we analyze whether the opponents\u27 gender is able to explain the gender gap in competitive behavior. Our findings indicate that gender differences disappear when women compete against men. This result is surprising, but emerges with remarkable consistency for the probability to (i) respond, (ii) respond correctly, and (iii) respond correctly in high-stakes situations. Even risk preferences in wagering decisions, where gender differences are especially pronounced, do not differ across gender once a woman competes against males. Using a fixed-effects framework, and therefore exploiting within-player variation only, confirms these findings. These results, derived from a large real-life setting, suggest that gender differences in performance and risk attitudes are not gender-inherent, but rather emerge in distinct social environments

Anchoring in Financial Decision-Making: Evidence from the Field

This paper analyzes 12,596 wagering decisions of 6,064 contestants in the US game show Jeopardy!, focusing on the anchoring phenomenon in financial decision-making. We find that contestants anchor heavily on the initial dollar value of a clue in their wagering decision, even though there exists no rational reason to do so. More than half of all wagers occur within $500 of the initial dollar value, although the maximum possible wagering value averages$5,914. This anchoring phenomenon remains statistically significant on the one percent level, even after controlling for scores, clue category, time trends, and player-fixed effects.When exploiting within-player variation only and implicitly controlling for a host of individual behavioral attitudes and preferences, raising the anchoring amount by 10 percent translates to an increase of 3.1 percent in the wager. In terms of magnitude, anchoring is marginally more pronounced for women with an elasticity of 0.34 versus 0.28 for males. Finally, this paper is among the first to investigate anchoring among children and teenagers. We find little evidence for anchoring among children under the age of 13, but the effect begins to emerge for teenagers and further manifests itself among college students. Overall, our findings suggest anchoring plays a substantial role in financial decision-making under pressure

Local RBF approximation for scattered data fitting with bivariate splines

In this paper we continue our earlier research [4] aimed at developing effcient methods of local approximation suitable for the first stage of a spline based two-stage scattered data fitting algorithm. As an improvement to the pure polynomial local approximation method used in [5], a hybrid polynomial/radial basis scheme was considered in [4], where the local knot locations for the RBF terms were selected using a greedy knot insertion algorithm. In this paper standard radial local approximations based on interpolation or least squares are considered and a faster procedure is used for knot selection, signicantly reducing the computational cost of the method. Error analysis of the method and numerical results illustrating its performance are given

Multivariate Anisotropic Interpolation on the Torus

We investigate the error of periodic interpolation, when sampling a function on an arbitrary pattern on the torus. We generalize the periodic Strang-Fix conditions to an anisotropic setting and provide an upper bound for the error of interpolation. These conditions and the investigation of the error especially take different levels of smoothness along certain directions into account

Delta--Excitation and Exchange Corrections for NN--Bremsstrahlung

The role of the relativistic amplitudes for a number of ${\cal O}(k)$ processes usually neglected in potential model calculations of NN--bremsstrahlung is investigated. In particular, we consider the $\Delta$--excitation pole contributions related to the one--pion and one--rho exchange and in addition include the exchange contributions induced by the radiative $\omega,\,\rho \to \pi \gamma$ decays. The contributions are calculated from relativistic Born amplitudes fitted to $\Delta$--production and absorption data in the energy range up to 1 GeV and then used to supplement potential model and soft photon calculations for nucleon--nucleon bremsstrahlung. The effects on $NN\gamma$--observables, although moderate in general, are found to be important in some kinematic domains.Comment: 15 pages in LaTex, using Revtex, 6 figures as uufile'd, compressed Postscript file included, TRIUMF preprint TRI-PP-94-9

The influence of negative-energy states on proton-proton bremsstrahlung

We investigate the effect of negative-energy states on proton-proton bremsstrahlung using a manifestly covariant amplitude based on a T-matrix constructed in a spectator model. We show that there is a large cancellation among the zeroth-order, single- and double-scattering diagrams involving negative-energy nucleonic currents. We thus conclude that it is essential to include all these diagrams when studying effects of negative-energy states.Comment: 12 pages revtex and 3 figure

On spin-rotation contribution to nuclear spin conversion in C_{3v}-symmetry molecules. Application to CH_3F

The symmetrized contribution of E-type spin-rotation interaction to conversion between spin modifications of E- and A_1-types in molecules with C_{3v}-symmetry is considered. Using the high-J descending of collisional broadening for accidental rotational resonances between these spin modifications, it was possible to co-ordinate the theoretical description of the conversion with (updated) experimental data for two carbon-substituted isotopes of fluoromethane. As a result, both E-type spin-rotation constants are obtained. They are roughly one and a half times more than the corresponding constants for (deutero)methane.Comment: 13 pages with single-spacing, REVTeX, no figures, accepted for publication in <J. Phys. B