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on Sports and Economics |
| By: | Umut Mert Dur (North Carolina State University); Robert G. Hammond (University of Alabama); M. Utku Ünver (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | Labor contracts typically do not limit worker mobility. Interesting exceptions exist in foreign worker reemployment, sports transfers and sometimes through non-compete clauses. We develop a model to address contractual designs for such markets. Although legally, a firm can contest its worker’s recruitment by a competitor, it may be more lenient if he can be replaced immediately. We develop a theory of stability suitable for such markets and propose stable-uncontested mechanisms. As our application, we consider transfers in collegiate sports governed by the NCAA, where before 2021, a student-athlete had to sit out a year after a transfer. Beginning in 2021, free mobility was allowed. Anecdotal evidence suggests while pre-2021 regulations were detrimental to student and college welfare, post-2020 regulations led to colleges struggling to keep rosters and withholding new scholarship slots to use in transfers. Our model also captures the NCAA’s pre-2021 and post-2020 regulations as well as our new proposed efficiency-enhancing criterion. Then, using data from men’s collegiate basketball, we estimate college and student-athlete preferences. Using the preferences we estimate from transfer data, we run counterfactual analyses of pre-2021 and post-2020 environments and our proposed regulations. Our proposal achieves closer student-athlete welfare to post-2020 than pre-2021 and increases college welfare with respect to post-2020 and pre-2021. |
| Keywords: | Matching Theory, Market Design, Matching with Contracts, Labor Mobility, NCAA Transfers Market |
| JEL: | C78 D61 D82 Z20 |
| Date: | 2025–12–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:1104 |
| By: | Sam Ganzfried |
| Abstract: | We present an algorithm for computing all evolutionarily stable strategies in nondegenerate normal-form games with three or more players. |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2511.20859 |
| By: | James C. Cox; Cary Deck; Laura Razzolini; Vjollca Sadiraj |
| Abstract: | Deviations from choices predicted by self-regarding preferences have regularly been observed in standard dictator games. Such behavior is not inconsistent with conventional preference theory or revealed preference theory, which accommodate other-regarding preferences. By contrast, experiments in which giving nothing is not the least generous feasible act produce data that is inconsistent with conventional preference theory including social preference models and suggest the possible relevance of reference point models. Two such models are the reference-dependent theory of riskless choice with loss aversion and choice monotonicity in moral reference points. Our experiment includes novel treatments designed to challenge both theoretical models of reference dependence and conventional rational choice theory by poking holes in or adding to the dictator's feasible set along with changes to the initial endowment of the players. Our design creates tests that at most one of these models can pass. However, we do not find that any of these models fully capture behavior. In part this result is due to our observing behavior in some treatments that differs from previous experiments for reasons attributable to implementation differences across studies. |
| Keywords: | Rational Choice Theory, Reference Dependence, Behavioral Models, Laboratory Experiments |
| JEL: | C7 C9 D9 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exc:wpaper:2025-02 |