A couple of weeks ago I joined The Sports Economist, a blog led by the one and only Skip Sauer. I have posted a few comments at this site examining the ability of payroll to explain wins in Major League Baseball, the possibility that we would be responsible for future …
This was originally posted at The Sports Economist on April 19. Like all sports fans, I want to know the future. I don’t want to wait around until October to see who will win the World Series. I want to know right now. Well, what do we know right now? We …
This was orignally posted at The Sports Economist on April 29. The NHL lock-out of 2004-05 was the seventh labor dispute in the past 25 years to cost North American fans access to the games they love. And this incident was the biggest, leading to the cancellation of an entire …
This was originally posted at The Sports Economist on May 2nd. One of the best recent articles written in the field of sports economics was “Losing to Win: Tournament Incentives in the National Basketball Association.” by Beck Taylor and Justin Trogdon. This paper, which appeared in The Journal of Labor Economics …
My post regarding competitive balance in the NBA generated a few responses at The Sports Economist blog. I posted a response at the Sports Economist which I thought I would make available for vast millions – okay, one or two – people reading this blog. The responses to my post …
Also posted at The Sports Economist The first round of the NBA playoffs ended on Saturday night. In eight first-round match-ups the team with the best regular season record won every time. Contrast that with the NHL playoffs where every top seed in the Western conference lost in the first …
We talk a bit in our book about drawing inferences from small samples. The playoffs in sports are a good example of a small sample that is insufficient to answer the question “who is the best?” Although small samples can be misleading, when the sample points in the direction you …
The Phoenix Suns finished the 04-05 season with 62 wins. Before the 05-06 campaign began the Suns lost three very productive performers – Quentin Richardson, Joe Johnson, and Amare Stoudemire. How productive were these players? In our book we detail how the statistics tabulated for the players can be used …
Our book is about applying economics to the study of sports. In telling our stories, we made mention of a number of economists. One of the first we mention is John Kenneth Galbraith, who died last Saturday at the age of 97. On my website I have the picture of …
A few weeks ago I noted the research of Cade Massey and Richard Thaler. At ESPN.com, Tuesday Morning Quarterback – Gregg Easterbrook – casts doubt on the work of these two economists. According to Easterbrook: “Researchers Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago and Cade Massey of Yale got some …