Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse? Persistent Bias in the Face of Experience, Competition, and High Stakes

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Operations, Information and Decisions Papers
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Other Economics
Sports Studies
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Pope, Devin G
Schweitzer, Maurice E
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Although experimental studies have documented systematic decision errors, many leading scholars believe that experience, competition, and large stakes will reliably extinguish biases. We test for the presence of a fundamental bias, loss aversion, in a high-stakes context: professional golfers' performance on the PGA Tour. Golf provides a natural setting to test for loss aversion because golfers are rewarded for the total number of strokes they take during a tournament, yet each individual hole has a salient reference point, par. We analyze over 2.5 million putts using precise laser measurements and find evidence that even the best golfers—including Tiger Woods—show evidence of loss aversion.

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2011-02-01
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American Economic Review
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