The doping dilemma is not the only dilemma in sport

Authors

  • Kjetil Haugen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17811/ebl.12.1.2023.40-48

Keywords:

Game Theory, Prisoner's Dilemma, Economics of Doping, Technological Change

Abstract

This article investigates training in sports and argues (and demonstrates) that training (game- theoretically) works exactly as doping do. That is, the Nash equilibrium is, under reasonable assumptions, a Prisoner’s Dilemma outcome. Furthermore, several other performance improving categories within sport are examined, and proven to behave similarly. Finally, a link to general competitive economic activity is examined and proven NOT (necessarily) to have similar characteristics. The article also discusses (initially) the Prisoner’s Dilemma game and its lack of a sensible definition. Such a definition is proposed, although this proposition is not considered the main finding in the paper.

References

R. Axelrod. Effective choice in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 24(1):3–25, Mar. 1980.

R. Axelrod. More Effective Choice in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Journal of Confict Resolution, 24(3):379–403, 1980.

Michael Bar-Eli, Alex Krumer, and Elia Morgulev. Ask not what economics can do for sports - ask what sports can do for economics. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 89:101597, 2020.

Y. Benjamini and A. Gafni. The diffusion of medical technology; “a prisoner’s dilemma” trap? Socioecon Plann Sci., 20(2):69–74, 1986.

A. Berentsen. The Economics of Doping. European Journal of Political Economy,

(18):109–127, 2002.

A. Berentsen, E. Bruegger, and S. Loertscher. On Cheating, Doping and Whistleblowing. European Journal of Political Economy, (24):415–436, 2008.

A. Berentsen and Y. Lengwiler. Fraudulent Acoounting and other Doping Games. Zurich: Institute for Empirical research in Economics, University of Zurich, 2003.

G. Breivik. The doping dilemma: Some game theoretical and philosophical considerations. Sportwissenschaft, (17):83–94, 1987.

G. Breivik. Game Theoretic Approach to Doping in Sport. In J. M. Hoberman, I. Waddington, and V. Møller, editors, Routledge Handbook of Drugs and Sport, pages 393–404. Routledge, 2013.

K. I. Carlaw and R. G. Lipsey. Productivity, technology, and economic growth: What is the relationship? Journal of Economic Surveys, 17(3):457–495, 2003.

A. K. Dixit and B. J. Nalebuff. Thinking Strategically – The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, London, 1991.

N. Eber. The Performance-Enhancing Drug Game Reconsidered: A Fair Play Approach. Journal of Sports Economics, (9):318–327, 2008.

I. El Fay. The future of influencers: Individual tokenization.

https : //tealfeed.com/future − influencers − individual − tokenization − 80ahe, Jun. 2021. From TealFeed.

K. K. Haugen. The performance-enhancing drug game. Journal of Sports Economics,

(5):67–86, 2004.

K. K. Haugen, T. Nepusz, and A. Petroczi. The Multi-Player Performance-Enhancing´ Drug Game. PLOS One, (8): e63306, 2013.

K. K. Haugen and A. Petroczi. The doping self-reporting game: The paradox of a´ ’false-telling’ mechanism and its potential research and policy implications. Sport Management Review, (15):512–517, 2012.

Investopedia. What is the prisoner’s dilemma.

https : //www.investopedia.com/terms/p/prisoners − dilemma.asp, Oct. 2021. From Investopedia.

L. Jiawei and G. Kendall. Finite iterated prisoner’s dilemma revisited: belief change and end-game effect. In Proceedings of the Behavioral and Quantitative Game THEORY: CONFERENCE ON FUTURE DIRECTIONS, volume Article No.: 48, May 2010.

W. Karush. Minima of functions of several variables with inequalities as side constraints. Master’s thesis, Dept. of mathematics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ilinois, 1939.

V. N. Kolokoltsov and O. A. Malafeev. Understanding game theory: introduction to the analysis of many agent systems with competition and cooperation. World Scientific, Hackensack, NJ, 2010.

D. M. Krebs, P. Milgrom, J.Roberts, and Wilson R. Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma. Journal of Economic Theory, 27(2):245–252, 1982.

H. Kuhn and A. W Tucker. Nonlinear Programming. Number MR 0047303 in Proceedings of 2nd Berkeley Symposium. University of California Press, Berkeley CA, 1951.

D. Mowery and N. Rosenberg. Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth. Cambridge University Press, 1989.

R. R. Nelson. Technology, institutions, and economic growth. Harvard University Press, 2005.

A. Rapoport, A.M Chammah, and C. J. Orwant. Prsioner’s Dilemma: A study in conflict and cooperation. Univ. of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, 1965.

D. Ryvkin. Contests with doping. Journal of Sports Economics, (14):253–275, 2013.

C. J. Stowe and S. Gilpatrick. Cheating and enforcement in asymmetric rank order tournaments. Southern Economic Journal, (77):1–14, 2010.

A. W. Tucker. The mathematics of Tucker: A sampler. The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal, 14(3):228–232, Jun. 1983.

Wkipedia. Prisoner’s dilemma. https : //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s dilemma, Sep. 2021. From Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia.

X. Yao and P. J. Darwen. An experimental study of N-Person Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma games. In X. Yao, editor, Progress in Evolutionary Computation, volume 956 of EvoWorkshops 1993, EvoWorkshops 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1995.

Downloads

Published

26-03-2023

How to Cite

Haugen, K. (2023). The doping dilemma is not the only dilemma in sport. Economics and Business Letters, 12(1), 40–48. https://doi.org/10.17811/ebl.12.1.2023.40-48

Issue

Section

Articles