Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/296342 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Citation: 
[Journal:] Quantitative Economics [ISSN:] 1759-7331 [Volume:] 14 [Issue:] 3 [Year:] 2023 [Pages:] 981-1020
Publisher: 
The Econometric Society, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
Mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium is the cornerstone of our understanding of strategic situations that require decision makers to be unpredictable. Using data from nearly half a million serves over 3000 tennis matches, and data on player rankings from the ATP and WTA, we examine whether the behavior of professional tennis players is consistent with equilibrium. We find that win rates conform remarkably closely to the theory for men, but conform somewhat less neatly for women. We show that the behavior in the field of more highly ranked (i.e., better) players conforms more closely to theory. We show that the statistical tests used in the prior related literature are not valid for large samples like ours; we develop a novel statistical test that is valid and show, via Monte Carlo simulations, that it is more powerful against the alternative that receivers follows a nonequilibrium mixture.
Subjects: 
Minimax
mixed strategy Nash equilibrium play
natural experiment
JEL: 
C12
C15
C72
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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