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on Sports and Economics |
| By: | Marein, Brian (Wake Forest University, Economics Department); Palsson, Craig (Utah State University) |
| Abstract: | Do narrow, or improbable, paths out of poverty, such as those in sports and entertainment, reduce the demand for schooling? We study the effect of professional baseball on educational attainment in the Dominican Republic, where all Major League Baseball (MLB) teams recruit teenage boys. We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to MLB’s sudden entry into the Dominican Republic based on preexisting local baseball cultures and leverage the fact that girls are not recruited for baseball. Using difference-in-differences and triple-differences designs, we find that baseball has no measurable effect on school attendance, in contrast to highly publicized accounts. |
| Keywords: | human capital; labor markets; school enrollment; economic development |
| JEL: | I25 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2024–03–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:wfuewp:0108&r=spo |
| By: | Giebe, Thomas (Department of Economics and Statistics); Gürtler, Oliver (Department of Economics, University of Cologne) |
| Abstract: | In competitive settings, disparities in player strength are common. It is intuitively unclear whether a stronger player would opt for larger or smaller effort compared to weaker players. Larger effort could leverage their strength, while lower effort might be justified by their higher probability of winning regardless of effort. We analyze contests with three or more players, exploring when stronger players exert larger or lower effort. To rank efforts, it suffices to compare marginal utilities in situations where efforts are equal. Effort ranking depends on differences in hazard rates (which are smaller for stronger players) and reversed hazard rates (which are larger for stronger players). Compared to weaker players, stronger players choose larger effort in winner-takes-all contests and lower effort in loser-gets-nothing contests. Effort rankings can be non-monotonic in contests with several identical prizes, and they depend on the slopes of players’ pdfs in contests with linear prize structure. |
| Keywords: | contest theory; heterogeneity; player strength |
| JEL: | C72 D74 D81 |
| Date: | 2024–03–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:vxesta:2024_004&r=spo |
| By: | Fumarco, Luca (Masaryk University); Longley, Neil (Nevada State University); Palermo, Alberto (University of Roehampton); Rossi, Giambattista (Birkbeck, University of London) |
| Abstract: | We follow workers' performance along an unbalanced panel dataset over multiple years and study how performance varies at the end of fixed-term contracts, in a labour market where some people face a mobility restricting clause (i.e., a noncompete clause). Focusing on the labour market of the National Hockey League, we analyse players' performance data and contracts with a fixed effect estimator to address empirical limitations in previous studies. We find that, on average, NHL players' performance does not vary. However, our estimations detect substantially heterogeneous behaviours, depending on tenure, perceived expected performance and mobility. Only younger players (i.e., restricted free-agents) with high expected mobility but low expected performance tend to behave strategically and perform better. Differently, older players (i.e., unrestricted free-agents) with high expected mobility tend to underperform, as the option of moving back to European tournaments is more appealing. |
| Keywords: | strategic behaviour, mobility, noncompete clauses |
| JEL: | D82 J24 J33 M52 Z22 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16836&r=spo |
| By: | Carsten Creutzburg (Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg); Wolfgang Maennig (Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg); Steffen Q. Mueller (Chair of Services & Operations Management, University of Zurich) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the impact of differences in consumers' racial preferences on worker productivity through the example of the home advantage (HA) effect using data on wins in men's professional tennis from 2001 to 2020 (pre-COVID-19). We identify players' racial affiliation as one of five distinct race groups by combining clustering algorithms and facial recognition software. Our empirical design innovates by allowing us to distinguish among HA factors related to the presence of fans, referee bias, travel fatigue, and home-court familiarity. We provide evidence of social environments where Black players benefit more strongly from fan support than players of other races. |
| Date: | 2024–03–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hce:wpaper:075&r=spo |
| By: | Aner Sela (BGU) |
| Keywords: | Elimination games, all-pay contests, simultaneous contests, sequential contests |
| JEL: | D44 J31 D72 D82 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bgu:wpaper:2312&r=spo |