nep-spo New Economics Papers
on Sports and Economics
Issue of 2021‒04‒19
three papers chosen by
Humberto Barreto
DePauw University

  1. The Effect of Sport in Online Dating: Evidence from Causal Machine Learning By Daniel Boller; Michael Lechner; Gabriel Okasa
  2. The Long-Run Effects of Sports Club Vouchers for Primary School Children By Marcus, Jan; Siedler, Thomas; Ziebarth, Nicolas R.
  3. Winner's Effort Maximization in Large Contests By Stefano Barbieri; Marco Serena

  1. By: Daniel Boller; Michael Lechner; Gabriel Okasa
    Abstract: Online dating emerged as a key platform for human mating. Previous research focused on socio-demographic characteristics to explain human mating in online dating environments, neglecting the commonly recognized relevance of sport. This research investigates the effect of sport activity on human mating by exploiting a unique data set from an online dating platform. Thereby, we leverage recent advances in the causal machine learning literature to estimate the causal effect of sport frequency on the contact chances. We find that for male users, doing sport on a weekly basis increases the probability to receive a first message from a woman by 50%, relatively to not doing sport at all. For female users, we do not find evidence for such an effect. In addition, for male users the effect increases with higher income.
    Date: 2021–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2104.04601&r=all
  2. By: Marcus, Jan (University of Hamburg); Siedler, Thomas (University of Hamburg); Ziebarth, Nicolas R. (Cornell University)
    Abstract: Starting in 2009, the German state of Saxony distributed sports club membership vouchers among all 33,000 third graders in the state. The policy's objective was to encourage them to develop a long-term habit of exercising. In 2018, we carried out a large register-based survey among several cohorts in Saxony and two neighboring states. Our difference-indifferences estimations show that, even after a decade, awareness of the voucher program was significantly higher in the treatment group. We also find that youth received and redeemed the vouchers. However, we do not find significant short- or long-term effects on sports club membership, physical activity, overweightness, or motor skills.
    Keywords: physical activity, voucher, primary school, obesity, habit formation, objective health measures, school health examinations, windfall gains, crowd-out, taxpayer subsidies
    JEL: I12 I14 I18 I28 I38 Z28 H71
    Date: 2021–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14246&r=all
  3. By: Stefano Barbieri; Marco Serena
    Abstract: We investigate the temporal structure that maximizes the winner's effort in large homogeneous contests, thus extending Hinnosaar (2019)'s analysis of total effort. We find that the winner's effort ranges from a lower bound of 0 to an upper bound of one third of the value of the prize, depending on the temporal structure; the upper (lower) bound is reached with an infinite number of players playing sequentially (simultaneously) in the first periods (period). This is in line with Hinnosaar's results for total effort. Nevertheless, when compare the speed of convergence of different temporal structures to the upper bound for the winner's effort, we prove the suboptimality of the fully sequential temporal structure, which is dominated by an initial number of fully sequential moves and a greater number of fully simultaneous moves in the very last period. This is in contrast with Hinnosaar's results for total effort.
    Date: 2020–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpi:wpaper:tax-mpg-rps-2020-13&r=all

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