Evening Standard:
Russell Lynch: Spreadsheet Phil?s grinning like a Cheshire cat at his #30bn windfall
9 March 2018
In the latest issue of the Economic Journal, there’s new research looking at how marathon runners respond to prize money pots, studying races over the past three decades. It turns out that the contests with the richest “winner takes all” prize pots don’t necessarily attract the best fields. While the runner’s chances of competing increase with the average prize on offer, they fall in proportion as more talented rivals join the field. The authors Ghazala Azmat and Marc Möller say that “talent repels talent to the extent that the contests with the highest prizes do not necessarily attract the most talented competitors”.
Related publications
‘The Distribution of Talent Across Contests’, Ghazala Azmat and Marc Möller, The Economic Journal, Volume 128, Issue 609, March 2018
Doi: 10.1111/ecoj.12426 ; http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecoj.12426/epdf