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on Sports and Economics |
| By: | Bouke Klein Teeselink (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Martijn J. van den Assem (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Dennie van Dolder (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | Berger and Pope (2011) show that being slightly behind increases the likelihood of winning in professional and collegiate basketball. We extend their analysis to large samples of Australian football, American football and rugby matches, but find little to no evidence of such an effect for these three sports. When we revisit the phenomenon for basketball, we do find supportive evidence for National Basketball Association (NBA) matches from the period analyzed in Berger and Pope. However, we find no significant effect for NBA matches from outside this sample period, for collegiate matches, and for matches from the Women's NBA. High-powered meta-analyses across the different sports and competitions do not reject the null hypothesis of no effect of being slightly behind on winning. |
| Keywords: | competition, motivation, performance, regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | Z20 D01 D91 |
| Date: | 2020–08–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200049&r=all |
| By: | Alex Bryson (Department of Quantitative Social Science, Institute of Education); Peter Dolton (Department of Economics, University of Sussex); J. James Reade (Department of Economics, University of Reading); Dominik Schreyer (Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung (WHU)); Carl Singleton (Department of Economics, University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | The Covid-19 pandemic has induced worldwide natural experiments on the effects of crowds. We exploit one of these experiments currently taking place over several countries in almost identical settings: professional football matches played behind closed doors. We find large and statistically significant effects on the number of yellow cards issued by referees. Without a crowd, fewer cards were awarded to the away teams, reducing home advantage. These results have implications for the influence of social pressure and crowds on the neutrality of refereeing decisions. |
| Keywords: | Attendance, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Home advantage, Natural Experiments, Referee Bias, Social Pressure |
| JEL: | C90 D91 L83 Z20 |
| Date: | 2020–08–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2020-18&r=all |
| By: | Christian Deutscher; David Winkelmann |
| Abstract: | The outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 led to a shutdown of economic activities in Europe. This included the sports sector, since public gatherings were prohibited. The German Bundesliga was among the first sport leagues realising a restart without spectators. Several recent studies suggest that the home advantage of teams was eroded for the remaining matches. Our paper analyses the reaction by bookmakers to the disappearance of such home advantage. We show that bookmakers had problems to adjust the betting odds in accordance to the disappeared home advantage, opening opportunities for profitable betting strategies. |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2008.05417&r=all |
| By: | Ernesto Reuben; Francesco Fallucchi; Daniele Nosenzo (Division of Social Science) |
| Abstract: | We validate experimentally a new survey item to measure the preference for competition. The item, which measures participants’ agreement with the statement “Competition brings the best out of me”, predicts individuals’ willingness to compete in the laboratory after controlling for their ability, beliefs, and risk attitude (Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007). We further validate the explanatory power of our survey item outside of the laboratory, by comparing responses across two samples with predicted differences in their preference for competition: professional athletes and non-athletes. As predicted, we find that athletes score higher on the item than non-athletes. |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nad:wpaper:20190034&r=all |