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The alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: A test using American football reception-coverage contest data
We utilize a contest-theoretic model to demonstrate a version of the alliance formation puzzle that aligns with reception-coverage contests in American football. Namely, secondary defenders can opt for single-coverage—1 v 1 contest. Alternatively, they can choose to ally—form double-coverage or 2 v...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7055841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32130221 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227750 |
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author | Ehrlich, Justin Harmon, Matthew Sanders, Shane |
author_facet | Ehrlich, Justin Harmon, Matthew Sanders, Shane |
author_sort | Ehrlich, Justin |
collection | PubMed |
description | We utilize a contest-theoretic model to demonstrate a version of the alliance formation puzzle that aligns with reception-coverage contests in American football. Namely, secondary defenders can opt for single-coverage—1 v 1 contest. Alternatively, they can choose to ally—form double-coverage or 2 v 1 contest with exogenous intra-alliance prize division—when defending a given receiver. In our theoretical treatment, we find that defenses have a lower equilibrium success rate in preventing the receiver from “getting open” under double-coverage than under single-coverage in the absence of capacity constraints. We also find that this success rate paradox is a necessary condition for the alliance formation puzzle. We then test the theoretical treatment by analyzing 8,508 plays of NCAA and NFL game data within a set of fixed effects, logistic regression models that control for receiver, level-of-play, and season-of-play. We find that equilibrium level of defensive success rises significantly and substantially (p-value < 0.01 and marginal effect of between 13 and 17 percentage points) when moving from single-coverage to double-coverage, ceteris paribus. There is strong evidence that the necessary condition for the alliance formation puzzle does not hold in this setting. We conclude that sufficiently-binding physiological and training-based capacity constraints eliminate the alliance formation puzzle in this setting, as was shown theoretically by Konrad and Kovenock (2009). This empirical result suggests that other contest settings that regularly feature alliance, such as liquidity-constrained conflict, may not be puzzling. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7055841 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-70558412020-03-13 The alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: A test using American football reception-coverage contest data Ehrlich, Justin Harmon, Matthew Sanders, Shane PLoS One Research Article We utilize a contest-theoretic model to demonstrate a version of the alliance formation puzzle that aligns with reception-coverage contests in American football. Namely, secondary defenders can opt for single-coverage—1 v 1 contest. Alternatively, they can choose to ally—form double-coverage or 2 v 1 contest with exogenous intra-alliance prize division—when defending a given receiver. In our theoretical treatment, we find that defenses have a lower equilibrium success rate in preventing the receiver from “getting open” under double-coverage than under single-coverage in the absence of capacity constraints. We also find that this success rate paradox is a necessary condition for the alliance formation puzzle. We then test the theoretical treatment by analyzing 8,508 plays of NCAA and NFL game data within a set of fixed effects, logistic regression models that control for receiver, level-of-play, and season-of-play. We find that equilibrium level of defensive success rises significantly and substantially (p-value < 0.01 and marginal effect of between 13 and 17 percentage points) when moving from single-coverage to double-coverage, ceteris paribus. There is strong evidence that the necessary condition for the alliance formation puzzle does not hold in this setting. We conclude that sufficiently-binding physiological and training-based capacity constraints eliminate the alliance formation puzzle in this setting, as was shown theoretically by Konrad and Kovenock (2009). This empirical result suggests that other contest settings that regularly feature alliance, such as liquidity-constrained conflict, may not be puzzling. Public Library of Science 2020-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7055841/ /pubmed/32130221 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227750 Text en © 2020 Ehrlich et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Ehrlich, Justin Harmon, Matthew Sanders, Shane The alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: A test using American football reception-coverage contest data |
title | The alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: A test using American football reception-coverage contest data |
title_full | The alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: A test using American football reception-coverage contest data |
title_fullStr | The alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: A test using American football reception-coverage contest data |
title_full_unstemmed | The alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: A test using American football reception-coverage contest data |
title_short | The alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: A test using American football reception-coverage contest data |
title_sort | alliance formation puzzle in contests with capacity-constraints: a test using american football reception-coverage contest data |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7055841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32130221 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227750 |
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