We study elimination tournaments with n stages and 2ⁿ symmetric players. The players have effort budgets that decrease within the stages proportionally to the efforts allocated in the previous stages such that for each effort unit that a player allocates, he loses α (the fatigue parameter)...

We exploit a unique setting in which two professionals compete in a real-life tennis contest with high monetary rewards in order to assess how men and women respond to competitive pressure. Comparing their performance in low-stakes versus high-stakes situations, we find that men consistently...