1.2 Course of the Investigation
The thesis design will take the shape of an empirical study.
It will therefore analyze through collected data the phenomenon observed by
Boyd and Boyd over the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
It will start with an overview of the relevant literature
review over the field of sports as an application to economic theory and over
the field of strategic behavior in contests. This theoretical background will
help me to justify why sport and athletics are a relevant application in order
to prove Baik and Shogren results in R&D rivalry and to have a better
understanding of Boyd and Boyd model in order to be able to modify it correctly
and improve it. After that, I will define a methodology that would try to
improve Boyd and Boyd model. Most of the articles come from EBSco Host database
and some others I took on Google scholar, especially for the scientific
articles that are not economic science or game theory related.
Strategic Behavior in Sport Contests 5
I will try first to improve it by changing the proxy variable,
which is the key variable of the study since the purpose of the study is to
measure in what way the behavior of a runner is affected by his pre-race
status. I will change it by implementing a calculated methodology for the
parameter which consider several data such as the PB, the season best (SB), the
honors. All the data concerning the different runners background, honors and
level, which will determine the index that will inputs the proxy of who is
favorite of the race and who is an underdog will be collected from the database
of World Athletics, (ex-International Association of Athletics Federations)
which is the international federation of athletics.
Then I will analyze all the race reports of the World
Championships finals from 2013 to 2019, which makes 4 world championships for
the distances of 800 m to 5 000 m (data was not available for 3000m
steeplechase and too complicated to collect for 10 000 m) in order to collect
data which will enable me to determine the level of effort for each athlete for
each interval studied. Only middle-distance races will be analyzed since they
are the only track and field event on which a strategic component is
involved.
After the compilation of all this data, I will analyze the way
the level of effort for a runner was influenced by the pre-race status of the
runner and by the place of the interval in the race, or in other words, is it
the beginning or the end of the race? However, I will also aggregate the data
coming from all the races much more than Boyd and Boyd did in order to be able
to find out if my observations are true in particular for specific cases of
race taken individually only or a more general phenomenon. I will also study
the model separating the population studied under different parameters such as
gender of the runners, cultures of the runners and density of the race.
Once the results of these regression will have been obtained,
I will be able to verify if my method observe the same phenomenon that Boyd and
Boyd did and find similar results to them. I will be also able to discuss the
results found and explain why some differences between my method and Boyd and
Boyd's method could be found. I will also try to find answers to the possible
differences I will find inside the population studied when I will have looked
at the variations inside the population looking at the different parameters
that I mentioned above.
Once all this will have been done, I hope I will be able to
give an answer to the research question I asked myself and be able to assess
Baik and Shogren results and Boyd and Boyd results or not. I hope also to find
other interesting results that will create something
Strategic Behavior in Sport Contests 6
Boyd and Boyd did not notice when they did their experiment
and that these findings will bring new insights in the field of strategic
behavior.
2 Theoretical Background
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