TY - JOUR AU - Duggan,Mark AU - Levitt,Steven D. TI - Winning Isn't Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 7798 PY - 2000 Y2 - July 2000 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7798 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7798.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Mark Duggan The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania 1452 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall 3620 Locust Walk Philadelphia, PA 19104 Tel: 215-898-0928 Fax: 215-898-7635 E-Mail: mduggan@wharton.upenn.edu Steven D. Levitt Department of Economics University of Chicago 1126 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Tel: 773/834-1862 Fax: 773/702-8490 E-Mail: slevitt@midway.uchicago.edu AB - Although the theoretical literature on corruption is well developed, empirical work in this area has lagged because it has proven difficult to isolate corrupt behavior in the data. In this paper, we look for evidence of corruption in an unlikely place: the highest echelons of Japanese sumo wrestling. This paper provides strong statistical evidence documenting match rigging in sumo wrestling. A non-linearity in the incentive structure of promotion leads to gains from trade between wrestlers on the margin for achieving a winning record and their opponents. We show that wrestlers win a disproportionate share of the matches when they are on the margin. Increased effort can not explain the findings. Winning on the bubble is more frequent when the two competitors have met often in the past. Success on the bubble tends to rise over the course of a wrestler's career, but declines in his last year, consistent with the game theoretic predictions. Wrestlers who are victorious when on the bubble lose more frequently than would be expected the next time they meet that opponent, suggesting that part of the payment for throwing a match is future payment in kind. Systematic differences across wrestling stables suggest that the stables play a role in facilitating the corruption. In times of increased media scrutiny, the match rigging disappears. ER -