Sports injuries and game stakes: Concussions in the National Football League.

The National Football League's regular‐season games are not of equal importance: some games loom larger than others for determining a team's chance to qualify for the playoffs. We develop an incentive‐based measure of the impact of winning a game on a team's qualification probability to study the re...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Economic Inquiry Vol. 62; no. 1; pp. 430 - 449
Autores principales: Courty, Pascal, Cisyk, Jeffrey
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Jan2024
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:The National Football League's regular‐season games are not of equal importance: some games loom larger than others for determining a team's chance to qualify for the playoffs. We develop an incentive‐based measure of the impact of winning a game on a team's qualification probability to study the relationship between stakes and injuries. We find teams are 24 percentage points more likely to suffer concussions in games where a win secures one team a playoff berth. This is the first evidence to support the risk‐escalation hypothesis that injuries increase with a competition's stakes. We then discuss implications for sports injury prevention.