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Category Archives: J4

For Love of the Game: A Study of Tournament Theory and Intrinsic Motivation in Dota 2

By YAO Shengjie

This paper studies the effect of intrinsic motivation on the extrinsic incentives specified by tournament structure in tournament theory in the context of e-sports. It incorporates tournament theory and motivation crowding theory in the same framework, something that past literature have hinted towards but never formally done so. It also uses an e-sports dataset, a type of dataset that few academics in the past have dealt with, but one that offers many interesting potentials. Results weakly show that crowding-in occurs in e-sports, but the effects of tournament structure on performance are inconclusive in the context of this paper. Implications of this paper lie mainly in the possibility for future academics to utilise e-sports data for research.

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Advisors: Professor Grace Kim | JEL Codes: J31, J33, J41, M51, M52, Z20

Incentives to Quit in Men’s Professional Tennis: An Empirical Test of Tournament Theory

By Will Walker

This paper studies the influence of incentives on quitting behaviors in professional men’s tennis tournaments and offers broader implications to pay structures in the labor market. Precedent literature established that prize incentives and skill heterogeneity can impact player effort exertion. Prize incentives include prize money and indirect financial rewards (ranking points). Players may also exert less effort when there is a significant difference in skill between the match favorite and the match underdog. Results warrant three important conclusions. First, prize incentives (particularly prize money) do influence a player’s likelihood of quitting. Results on skill heterogeneity are less conclusive, though being the “match favorite” could reduce the odds of quitting. Finally, match underdogs and “unseeded” players may be especially susceptible to the influence of prize incentives when considering whether to quit.

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Advisors: Peter Arcidiacono and Grace Kim | JEL Codes: J41, J31, J32, J33, M12, M51, M52

Implications of Teacher Tenure on Teacher Quality and Student Performance in North Carolina

By Dana Fenster

This paper examines the relationship between teacher tenure and teacher quality in North Carolina, measured via student performance on the state End of Grade (EOG) standardized tests. After presenting a comprehensive synopsis of the current teacher tenure policy, I use data from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center (NCERDC) to compare demonstrated teacher effectiveness across the tenure bubble, defined as one to eight years of teaching experience within the same district. Ultimately, I find that there is significant jump in average teacher quality at the tenure cutoff, suggesting that tenure policy is effective in retaining high quality teachers while removing those who are ineffective.

Honors Thesis

Advisor: Hugh Macartney | JEL Codes: I21, J24, J41, M5 | Tagged: Economics of Education, Labor Economics, Teacher Tenure

Is the Blind Side Tackle Worth It?: An Analysis of the Salary Allocation of the NFL Offensive Line

By Kelly Froelich

The importance of the left tackle position in comparison to the other offensive line positions in the National Football League (NFL) has been widely debated amongst sports commentators, as the left tackle is traditionally the second highest paid player on a football team behind the quarterback; yet, this debate lacks empirical findings. This paper aims to quantify the impact of the individual offensive linemen on the chance of winning a game on a game‐by‐game basis and then compare the impact of the left tackle to the other offensive line positions. Using a conditional logistic regression and the marginal effects from that regression, the results do not dispute the NFL’s current trend in spending more on the left tackle in comparison to the other offensive line positions. The results show that optimal spending for the left tackle could extend to 15.976 percent of the salary cap. Thus, the possibility remains that the optimal spending for the left tackle can range up to fifteen percent of the
salary cap, seven percentage points above the next highest optimal offensive lineman spending.

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Advisor: Peter Arcidiacon | JEL Codes: J3, J31, J44 | Tagged: Football, Left Tackle, NFL, Offensive Line, Salary

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Undergraduate Program Assistant
Matthew Eggleston
dus_asst@econ.duke.edu

Director of the Honors Program
Michelle P. Connolly
michelle.connolly@duke.edu