Early Round Upsets and Championship Blowouts

In "Early Round Upsets and Championship Blowouts" published in the Economic Inquiry, Rich Harbaugh and Tilman Klumpp discuss how in the early rounds of the tournament the bigger teams under estimate the underdogs. Harbaugh and Klumpp go into detail about the effort that each team gives out in each tournament game. They also use the information by Nash tries to explain the equilibrium that goes into the tournament. Each team tries not to exert a lot of energy in the early rounds to save their energy for the later rounds. On the other hand, the underdogs give more effort in the early rounds and waste all their energy for the later rounds. The article goes on to show the probability of each team giving equal effort, the favorite is less likely to win. Nash uses data collected over the years of the tournament and takes the favorite's predicted margin of victory to the actual margin of victory. This article uses models, equations, data, and experiments to explain the upsets in the tournament.

Work Cited

Harbaugh,Rich and Klumpp,Tilmann. "Early Round Upsets and Championship Blowouts". Economic Inquiry (2005): 316-29