For the past few weeks my ability to post in this forum has been limited.   And as I will explain, that should continue for a few more weeks. The reason for this is the Western Economic Association meetings, which will be held in San Diego in a few weeks.

The NAASE Sessions

These meetings (I think) are the second largest academic meeting for economists.  The North American Association of Sports Economists have organized seventeen sessions for these meetings.  Each session consists of four papers, so that means there will be 68 papers presented at the WEA meetings in the NAASE sessions.

These papers are being presented by economists from around the world.  And for those interested in reviewing the titles and authors, the preliminary program has been posted.

Here are the specific NAASE sessions (again, look at the program for the specific papers being presented):

Session 13: The Economics of American Footbal

Session 34: The Economics of Baseball

Session 51: Basketball: Market Structure and Labor Issues

Session 72: The Economics of Football I: Labor Issues

Session 87: Leagues, Facilities, and Events

Session 104: Consumer Demand in Sports

Session 114: The NCAA: Earnings and Incentives

Session 129: Hockey: Economic Outcomes

Session 147: The Economics of Football II

Session 168: Contest Theory and Performance

Session 185: Competitive Balance in Sports

Session 203: Women and Sports I

Session 223: Topics in Sports Economics I

Session 238: Topics in Sports Economics II

Session 254: Women and Sports II

Session 271: Topics in Sports Economics III

Session 272: Topics in Sports Economics IV

These sessions were organized by Tony Krautmann, Brad Humphreys, and I.  And as you can see, our ability to come up with session titles is very limited.

Incentives at Academic Meetings

These sessions are not a media event (although members of the media can attend, and surprisingly, have done so in the past).  And they are not televised.  So I thought I would comment briefly on how these sessions work.

As noted, each session consists of four papers.  And as one can see in the program, there are also four discussants.  So here is how a session functions.  The author(s) of each paper has fifteen minutes to present their research.  After that presentation, a discussant stands up to offer about five minutes worth of comments.

A few years ago a veteran researcher explained how one should discuss a paper (as he explained to one of his graduate students):

• First, say something nice about the paper.
• Second, spend about five minutes reviewing all that is wrong with the paper.
• Finally, conclude by saying something nice about the paper.

In sum, the discussant spends much of their time explaining how the paper can be improved.  And if everyone stays within their time limits, we still have time in each session for the audience to take a few shots as well.

As one can sense, the focus in each session is on finding issues with each paper.  The reason for this focus (I think) is the incentives facing the participants.  The participants are professors (or graduate students) who are ultimately judged on publications.  In other words, conference presentations don’t count for much (if anything at all).  Ultimately for these papers to count they must be published in refereed journals.   Space in these journals, though, is limited (which is why the journals that publish the papers my co-authors and I write tend to reject the majority of papers submitted).  Given this limited space, we all have an incentive to critique other papers that might take a slot we would like for one of our papers.

Beyond this issue, these papers are not going to be published without another review process.  After the meetings, people will be submitting their papers to journals, and there is a chance one of us will have to review it again.  If we can see the paper isn’t very good now, though, we would like to convey this sentiment to the author(s).  After all, our time is also limited and we would also like to avoid reviewing a paper that really shouldn’t be submitted in the first place.  Furthermore, it doesn’t make much sense for other people to spend their limited time on a paper that is ultimately going to be rejected.

The process you see at academic meetings like the WEA seems different from what we often see when “research” is reviewed on-line.  About five years ago I offered a critique of John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating.  Hollinger offered a quick response (the only time, I think, he has ever responded).  This response included the following statement:

I’ve been trying real hard not to say anything about Wages of Wins, because it would only come across as self-serving to knock the work of another person in the field.

In other words, Hollinger didn’t think it was appropriate to critique the work of other people.  A similar sentiment was expressed in the APBR forum some time ago (I don’t have a link since this forum was unfortunately brought down by some fairly sad people).  The APBR people were trying to critque adjusted plus-minus (with an emphasis on “trying”).  At one point (as I recall), an APM person responded by saying “aren’t we all friends here?”  Again, criticism was not something people thought was appropriate.

I am not suggesting that criticism never occurs.  But it is often muted and tentative.  And within the group, it seems people are much more comfortable offering praise and encouragement (even if the “research” is awful).

My explanation for this behavior focuses again on incentives.  On-line forums do not have a space limitation.  And no one is getting fired because they fail to publish.  So these incentives to criticize do not exist.  In addition, the members of the group are going to repeatedly interact with each other.  If you spend your time “attacking” (another word for criticizing) other people’s work, the group is not going to want you to hang around.  So there is an incentive to limit your criticism of people within the group (of course, there is no such constraint with respect to criticism of people outside the group).

Let me also note that I imagine this criticism of the on-line process will bring some criticism (again, I am not really part of this group).  But that’s okay.  As noted, I have been criticized before :)

A Few More Notes on the NAASE and WEA

Let me close with a few more observations on the WEA meeting.  First, if you go through the program you will see that I am part of the following seven papers (with ten different co-authors).  Here are the papers my co-authors and I will present:

• Berri, David, Brad Humphreys, Rob Simmons. “On the Evaluation of Offensive Lineman in the National Football League.”
• Berri, David J., Michael Leeds, Peter von Allmen. “Monoposonistic Exploitation in the NBA.”
• Berri, David J., Jennifer Van Gilder, and Aju Fenn. “Is the Sports Media Color-blind?”
• Van Gilder, Jennifer, Kaitlyn Myers, Rob Simmons, and David Berri. “White Men Can’t Run:  An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of Skin Tone Shade on Running Backs in the National Football League.”
• Berri, David and Anthony Krautmann.  “Perceptions of Performance in the WNBA”
• Craft, R. Kim, Graham Cheever, and David Berri. “Thoroughbred Racehorse Market Efficiency: Do Wealthy People Play Rationally?”
• Schmidt, Martin and David Berri. “On the Evolution of Competitive Balance in Professional Sports.”

Southern Utah University has recently promoted me to full professor. And that is my last promotion for my career (there is no “super-full professor” or “really full of it professor”).  So I really don’t need to co-author seven papers in one year (I didn’t need to do this before, but now I really don’t need to do this).  My co-authors, though, seemed to want my help (or I wanted there help… who knows?).  Plus, I have trouble saying “no” (or they have trouble saying “no”).  So I ended up with much more work to do than I now want.

Although much of this research is finished, some still needs to be done.   So that means my ability to post over the next few days will still be limited (although I still hope to offer some brief comments on some stuff that comes up). 

One final note… When these papers have been presented (and criticized by the discussants and members of the audience), my term as President of the North American Association of Sports Economists will come to an end (my one-year term ends when the meetings are over).  Although we call our organization the North American Association of Sports Economists, our membership comes from around the world.  And after my term as NAASE President expires, Rob Simmons – of Lancaster University in the United Kingdom – will become our next President.

Rob and I will have an important task during and after these meetings.  A special issue of the Journal of Sports Economics will be constructed from papers presented at these meetings (papers by Rob and I are not eligible).  So we will be selecting papers at this meetings to be submitted for this special issue. These papers will then be reviewed again, and the best will appear next summer in the JSE.

If you wish to read these papers, let me note that members in the NAASE – and non-economists are more than welcome to join –receive a subscription to the JSE.  So if you wish to read these papers, please feel free to join the fun.

- DJ