Just a Game
David Berri & Rob Simmons
Journal of Productivity Analysis, February 2011, Pages 37-49
Abstract:
The reverse order college draft gives the worst teams in the National Football League (NFL) the opportunity to hire the best amateur talent. For it to work effectively, teams must be able to identify the "best" talent. Our study of NFL quarterbacks highlights problems with the draft process. We find only a weak correlation between teams' evaluations on draft day and subsequent quarterback performance in the NFL. Moreover, many of the factors that enhance a quarterback's draft position are unrelated to future NFL performance. Our analysis highlights the difficulties in evaluating workers in the uncertain environment of professional sports.
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Moving on Up: The Rooney Rule and Minority Hiring in the NFL
Benjamin Solow, John Solow & Todd Walker
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Detecting and quantifying racial discrimination in the labor market is difficult. The sports industry offers a wealth of data and specific hiring practices which mitigates this difficulty. The Rooney Rule requires National Football League teams to interview at least one minority candidate when hiring a head coach. We examine a unique data set of high-level assistant coaches (offensive and defensive coordinators) from 1970 to 2008 to determine whether race is a factor in NFL teams' decisions to promote these assistants to head coach. Using logit and hazard models that control for age, experience and performance, we conclude that conditional on a coach reaching coordinator status, there is no evidence that race influences head coach hiring decisions. We also find no evidence that the Rooney Rule has increased the number of minority head coaches.
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Daniel Kuester & Shane Sanders
Journal of Economics and Finance, January 2011, Pages 116-122
Abstract:
Using game results over a seven year span (1999-2006), we find that United States college football teams in arid regions "win" against the spread in 56.64% of games in which they host a team from a humid region. This result provides statistically significant evidence for both weak and strong form inefficiency in the spread betting markets of such games. By examining other cases of intraregional and interregional competition within the sport, we conclude that this inefficiency does not arise from the effects of travel or home field advantage. Rather, the result indicates that climate aridity is an observed characteristic for which college football betting markets do not accurately control. It is quite rare to find strong form market inefficiency arise from a single variable rather than from an elaborate, multivariable betting strategy. Therefore, the effect of climate aridity upon college football spread betting market efficiency can be characterized as dramatic. It is conjectured that remote market participants may need to "experience" certain types of relevant regional information, such as climate, to act in a market efficient manner.
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Situational Gamblers: Prospect Theory and the Commonalities of Presidential Campaign Management
David O'Connell
Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2011, Pages 64-92
Abstract:
In this article, prospect theory helps shed light on an underdeveloped topic in political science: the management strategies of presidential campaigns. In particular, prospect theory is used to understand critical decisions made by the campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush during three critical junctures of the 1980 presidential primary season. Prospect theory's central finding - that individuals are risk averse when facing gains and risk acceptant when facing losses - provides a systematic and empirically grounded explanation for seemingly puzzling decisions made by each campaign. In a broad sense, this essay begins the process of developing a general perspective on presidential campaign management.
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New Evidence of Salary Discrimination in Major League Baseball
Paul Holmes
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Salary discrimination in MLB has largely been discarded as a research topic. However traditional quantitative methods (particularly least squares regression) have concentrated on the effect of race for the average player. If only a particular salary class of players are subject to discrimination, or if the size of the discrimination is small at the average, then least-squares techniques will struggle to identify discrimination. I use quantile regression to uncover salary discrimination against black players in the lower half of the salary distribution. Not only are the premia for white and Hispanic players statistically significant, but they are large: up to 25% of salary for the bottom quintile of players.
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Bryan Mccannon
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Strategic offsetting behavior occurs when a policy is offset by an individual not targeted by the policy. By affecting the payoffs of the target the incentives of a strategic competitor are adjusted, which acts to mitigate the policy. Evidence is presented using data from National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball. For the 2008-2009 season, the three-point line was extended. This leads to not only a decrease in three-point shooting and scoring, but also a decrease in the percentage of two-point shots made. This evidence is consistent with defenses adjusting their focus away from the more difficult three-point shot, which strategically offset the policy.
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Letting Down the Team? Evidence of Social Effects of Team Incentives
Philip Babcock et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2011
Abstract:
This paper investigates the effectiveness of incentivizing people in teams versus incentivizing them as individuals. In a field experiment featuring exogenous team-formation and opportunities for repeated social interactions over time, we find that subjects are more apt to attempt an effort-intensive exercise task when they are on a team, even when the expected payout is lower. The main results are driven by inactive types, who exert more effort in team settings and are more likely to accomplish the task, despite the lower expected pay-off. We conclude that social effects in teams exist and can be decisive in motivating effort-intensive tasks.
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The "Sprinter effect": When self-control and involvement stand in the way of sequential performance
Danit Ein-Gar & Yael Steinhart
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examines the joint effect of dispositional self-control and situational involvement on performance in two successive resource-demanding tasks. We demonstrate that being highly involved and having high self-control facilitates high performance in the first task but, contrary to intuition, may jeopardize performance in a second, unexpected task. We term this the "sprinter effect" and demonstrate it in both lab and field settings. We further explore how a "marathon" mindset can debias this effect.
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Kait Clark, Mathias Fleck & Stephen Mitroff
Acta Psychologica, January 2011, Pages 67-72
Abstract:
Recent research has shown that avid action video game players (VGPs) outperform non-video game players (NVGPs) on a variety of attentional and perceptual tasks. However, it remains unknown exactly why and how such differences arise; while some prior research has demonstrated that VGPs' improvements stem from enhanced basic perceptual processes, other work indicates that they can stem from enhanced attentional control. The current experiment used a change-detection task to explore whether top-down strategies can contribute to VGPs' improved abilities. Participants viewed alternating presentations of an image and a modified version of the image and were tasked with detecting and localizing the changed element. Consistent with prior claims of enhanced perceptual abilities, VGPs were able to detect the changes while requiring less exposure to the change than NVGPs. Further analyses revealed this improved change detection performance may result from altered strategy use; VGPs employed broader search patterns when scanning scenes for potential changes. These results complement prior demonstrations of VGPs' enhanced bottom-up perceptual benefits by providing new evidence of VGPs' potentially enhanced top-down strategic benefits.
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Kristi Allain
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, March 2011, Pages 3-22
Abstract:
In this article, I will explore how Canadian national identity is constructed with regard to ice hockey. National Hockey League (NHL) star, Sidney Crosby has been positioned as an important symbol of Canadian national identity. Given Crosby's perceived importance, particularly within the Canadian media, I will examine how he is constructed as an appropriate model of Canadian masculinity and Canadian national identity. Crosby's expressions of masculinity are not to be left to chance and for that reason there has been constant surveillance and critique of his expressions of masculinity. Interestingly, although the media tends to construct Crosby as a model of Canadian masculine identity, fans of the game (as well as some players and others in the media) frequently challenge this construction.
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Is There Salary Discrimination by Nationality in the NBA? Foreign Talent or Foreign Market
Chih-Hai Yang & Hsuan-Yu Lin
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authority of the National Basketball Association (NBA) over the past decade has actively internationalized the game by recruiting potential international players and expanding overseas markets. This article examines the determinants of salaries for NBA players, aiming to identify the existence of nationality discrimination on players' salary and whether the market size of international players' home countries matters to their compensation. Based on an unbalanced panel data of 618 NBA players between the 1999-2000 and 2007-2008 seasons and employing the technique of two-stage double fixed-effect model, the empirical results suggest that international players seem to receive a lower salary than that of their U.S.-born counterparts, ceteris paribus, suggesting the existence of salary discrimination by nationality. However, international players who come from a large economy receive preferential labor market treatment, highlighting the importance of the home country market to their salaries. The player characteristics such as positions, height, draft, and a team's local market size indeed play crucial roles in determining players' salaries. The authors also find that U.S.-born white players tend to be paid less than U.S.-born black players. It may reflect the fact that more whites tend to be Bench players or the possibility of racial discrimination.
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Andrew Rose & Mark Spiegel
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why should countries offer to host costly ‘mega-events' such as the Olympic Games? We show that hosting a mega-event increases exports. This effect is statistically robust, permanent and large; trade is over 20% higher for host countries. Interestingly, unsuccessful bids to host the Olympics have a similar impact on exports. We conclude that the Olympic effect on trade is attributable to the signal a country sends when bidding to host the games, rather than the act of actually holding a mega-event. We develop an appropriate formal model and derive conditions under which liberalising countries will signal through a mega-event bid.
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Toward a Weberian theory of gambling: The rationalization of legal gambling in Israel
Moshe Levy
International Gambling Studies, December 2010, Pages 207-220
Abstract:
Among the various sociological theories of gambling, only a handful are based on the ideas of Max Weber, and particularly on his thesis of rationalization. Using a Weberian framework, this study presents a socio-historical analysis of legal gambling in Israel. The analysis reveals that gambling in Israel has undergone a 'McDonaldization' process. As part of this process of 'McDonaldization', legal gambling organizations have adopted technological means aimed at making work methods faster and more efficient, enabling gamblers to plan their gambling in a calculated, non-random fashion. Together with 'McDonaldization', an instrumental discourse has been introduced into the public debate about gambling. The use of language that seeks to describe that which is good and ethical has been abandoned, replaced by a new vocabulary that emphasises the method and efficiency of the gambling operation.
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Gambling among Minnesota public school students from 1992 to 2007: Declines in youth gambling
Randy Stinchfield
Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, forthcoming
Abstract:
The specific aims of this study are twofold. First, measure 2007 rates of gambling and underage gambling among public school students. Second, compare rates of gambling, frequent gambling, and underage gambling from 1992 to 2007. The 2007 sample includes 40,605 male and 42,655 female Minnesota public school students enrolled in the 9th and 12th grades and similar sample sizes from 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001, and 2004. Students were administered the Minnesota Student Survey, a 126-item, anonymous, self-administered, paper-and-pencil questionnaire that inquires about multiple health-related content domains, including gambling behavior. In 2007, most students gambled at least once during the past year, however, most did not gamble frequently. Gambling participation has shown a gradual and consistent decline from 1992 to 2007 for both boys and girls. Underage gambling has also shown declines over time. Conversely, rates of frequent gambling (weekly or more often) have remained fairly stable over time. There have been two fluctuations of note, a peak in lottery play in 1998 and a peak in card playing in 2004 with subsequent declines in both.
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Testosterone is positively associated with risk taking in the Iowa Gambling Task
Steven Stanton, Scott Liening & Oliver Schultheiss
Hormones and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
The association between testosterone and economic risk is not well-understood and is understudied. The present study aimed to further characterize what if any relationship testosterone has with risky economic decisions. To do so, 154 participants (78 men) completed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) (Bechara et al., 1994) and also provided saliva samples, which were assayed for endogenous testosterone levels using radioimmunoassay. High-levels of endogenous testosterone were associated with choosing less frequently from advantageous IGT decks of cards, indicating greater risk taking. The data showed that the effects of testosterone on IGT performance were similar for men and women. High-testosterone women and high-testosterone men made riskier choices than did their low-testosterone counterparts of the same sex, and this effect was pronounced in women. Thus, high levels of testosterone are associated with willingness to incur greater risk in both sexes.
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Emotion, decision, and risk: Betting on gambles versus betting on people
Tamar Kugler, Terry Connolly & Lisa Ordóñez
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined the effects of two emotions, fear and anger, on risk-taking behavior in two types of tasks: Those in which uncertainty is generated by a randomizing device ("lottery risk") and those in which it is generated by the uncertain behavior of another person ("person-based risk"). Participants first completed a writing task to induce fear or anger. They then made choices either between lotteries (Experiment 1) or between actions in risky two-person decisions (Experiments 2 and 3). The experiments involved substantial real-money payoffs. Replicating earlier studies (which used hypothetical rewards), Experiment 1 showed that fearful participants were more risk-averse than angry participants in lottery-risk tasks. However - the key result of this study - fearful participants were substantially less risk-averse than angry participants in a two-person task involving person-based risk (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 offered options and payoffs identical to those of Experiment 2 but with lottery-type risk. Risk-taking returned to the pattern of Experiment 1. The impact of incidental emotions on risk-taking appears to be contingent on the class of uncertainty involved. For lottery risk, fear increased the frequency of risk-averse choices and anger reduced it. The reverse pattern was found when uncertainty in the decision was person-based. Further, the effect was specifically on differences in willingness to take risks rather than on differences in judgments of how much risk was present. The impact of different emotions on risk-taking or risk-avoiding behavior is thus contingent on the type, as well as the degree, of uncertainty the decision maker faces.
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The Effects of Homophily, Identification, and Violent Video Games on Players
Kevin Williams
Mass Communication and Society, January 2011, Pages 3-24
Abstract:
After an experiment with 148 male participants, results indicated that skinning a video game character to physically resemble the player led to greater identification and psychological involvement with the game's character but did little to impact the feeling of presence. Exposure to violent content also led to greater physical hostility than exposure to nonviolent content. An interaction effect revealed playing a violent game with a character physically resembling the player led to even greater hostility.
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Red Cards: Not Such Bad News For Penalized Guest Teams
Mario Mechtel, Agnes Bäker, Tobias Brändle & Karin Vetter
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
A popular soccer myth states that teams affected by a sending-off perform better than they would have performed without it. Based on economic theory, the authors analyze the course of soccer matches using data from the German Bundesliga from 1999 to 2009. The results show that sending-offs against home teams have a negative impact on their performance. However, for guest teams, the impact depends on the time remaining after the sending-off and can be positive if the sending-off occurs late in the game. Thus, the "ten do it better" myth seems to hold for guest teams to a certain extent.
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Talent and/or Popularity: What Does It Take to Be a Superstar?
Egon Franck & Stephan Nuesch
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
We show that both talent and popularity significantly contribute to stars' market values in German soccer. The talent-versus-popularity controversy on the sources of stardom goes back to Rosen (1981) and Adler (1985). All attempts to resolve the controversy empirically face the difficulty of accurately identifying talent. In professional sports, rank-order tournaments help in ascertaining talent. Analyzing a team setting, we use 20 different performance indicators to estimate a player's talent according to his ability to increase the team's winning probability.