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on Sports and Economics |
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Issue of 2018‒03‒26
three papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Brams, Steven J.; Ismail, Mehmet S.; Kilgour, D. Marc; Stromquist, Walter |
| Abstract: | Service sports include two-player contests such as volleyball, badminton, and squash. We analyze four rules, including the Standard Rule (SR), in which a player continues to serve until he or she loses. The Catch-Up Rule (CR) gives the serve to the player who has lost the previous point—as opposed to the player who won the previous point, as under SR. We also consider two Trailing Rules that make the server the player who trails in total score. Surprisingly, compared with SR, only CR gives the players the same probability of winning a game while increasing its expected length, thereby making it more competitive and exciting to watch. Unlike one of the Trailing Rules, CR is strategy-proof. By contrast, the rules of tennis fix who serves and when; its tiebreaker, however, keeps play competitive by being fair—not favoring either the player who serves first or who serves second. |
| Keywords: | Sports rules; service sports; Markov processes; competitiveness; fairness; strategy-proofness |
| JEL: | C7 C72 D6 D63 L83 |
| Date: | 2016–12–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:75650&r=spo |
| By: | Sur, Pramod Kumar (Osaka University); Sasaki, Masaru (Osaka University) |
| Abstract: | Research in the field of customer discrimination has received relatively little attention even if the theory of discrimination suggests that customer discrimination may exist in the long run whereas employer and employee discrimination may not. This paper examines customer discrimination considering a unique dataset from the most popular sports industry in India, i.e., cricket. Relying on Playing XI vote in the Indian Premier League (IPL), we analyze whether supporters have a different personal preference towards players based on their location of origin and religion. In contrast to the often-heated rhetoric surrounding discrimination, the often-unfounded assertions surrounding diversity, and the previous literature, we overall do not find any discrimination in voting. Our overall findings suggest that supporters treat players equally irrespective of nationality, place of origin or religious background while selecting their favorite players. However, our results also suggest that examining discrimination by controlling for proxy productivity characteristics may produce bias results as certain included or excluded characteristics may be systematically different. Our findings further suggest that political conflict may lead to customer discrimination. And finally, in line with Heckman's (1998) argument, our results suggest that customer discrimination may exist on the margin. |
| Keywords: | customer discrimination, professional sports, cricket, India |
| JEL: | J71 L83 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11319&r=spo |
| By: | Shoko Yamane; Ryohei Hayashi |
| Abstract: | This study examined the peer effects of newcomer on the performance of existing members of teams, based on comparing the performances of swimming team members before and after the arrival of a newcomer. The identification strategy was similar to a natural experimental setting. This study found that the performance of an existing member of a team improves when a newcomer joins the team and that this effect is larger when the newcomer is a superior to the original team members. |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1025&r=spo |