Discussion paper
DP17585 An economic approach to sports injury policies
We propose an analysis of sports injury interventions founded on the assertion that sports injuries may be due to both uncontrollable risks (accidents from participating in sports) and controllable risks (athlete’s deliberate choices in risk-taking). Athletes under-adopt injury interventions that increase the cost of taking risk and over-adopt those that decrease this cost. We apply this insight to discuss several interventions used in practice and provide a tool to assess injury policies. We argue that interventions that de-escalate risk, such as return-to-play rules, should be favoured relative to those that tend to escalate risk, such as a treatment program.
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