TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Dupuy, Arnaud
        TI  - Process Utility in High-Stakes Competition
        PY  - 2026/May/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18625
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18625
        AB  - We study how individuals trade off outcome (what) and process (how) utility in high-stakes strategic decisions. We exploit optimality conditions and high-frequency choices in professional tennis to derive nonparametric bounds on process utility and implement a structural approach to estimate player-specific preferences. Under mild shape restrictions, these bounds imply that a large majority of players place positive weight on process utility. Our structural estimates further show that most players systematically sacrifice success probabilities to increase process utility, generating economically  meaningful effects on match outcomes and expected earnings.
        KW  - process utility
KW  - intrinsic motivation
KW  - outcome utility
KW  - salience weight
KW  - strategic behavior
KW  - nonparametric
KW  - structural estimation
        ER  -