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on Sports and Economics |
| By: | Dorian Owen (Department of Economics, University of Otago, New Zealand); Caitlin Owen (Department of Information Science, University of Otago, New Zealand) |
| Abstract: | Measurement of the degree of competitive balance, how evenly teams are matched, is central to the economic analysis of professional sports leagues. A common problem with competitive balance measures, however, is their sensitivity to the number of teams and the number of matches played by each team, i.e., season length. This paper uses simulation methods to examine the effects of changes in season length on the distributions of several widely used variants of the Herfindahl- Hirschman index applied to wins in a season. Of the measures considered, a normalized measure, accounting for lower and upper bounds, and an adjusted measure perform best, although neither completely removes biases associated with different season lengths. |
| Keywords: | Herfindahl-Hirschman, Competitive balance, Simulation |
| JEL: | D63 C63 L83 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:otg:wpaper:1715&r=spo |
| By: | Radek Janhuba; Kristyna Cechova |
| Abstract: | Economists have found mixed evidence on what happens when the number of police increases. On the one hand, more law enforcers means a higher probability of detecting a crime, which is known as the monitoring effect. On the other hand, criminals incorporate the increase into their decision-making process and thus may commit fewer crimes, constituting the deterrence effect. This study analyzes the effects of an increase in the number of on-field college football officials, taking players as potential criminals and officials as law enforcers. Analyzing a novel play by play dataset from two seasons of college football, we report evidence of a monitoring e ect being present in the overall dataset. This effect is mainly driven by offensive penalties which are called in the area of jurisdiction of the added official. Decomposition of the effect provides evidence of the presence of the deterrence effect in cases of penalties with severe punishment or those committed by teams with moderate to high ability, suggesting that teams are able to strategically adapt their behavior following the addition of an official. |
| Keywords: | football; official; crime; deterrence |
| JEL: | H43 K14 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp610&r=spo |