nep-spo New Economics Papers
on Sports and Economics
Issue of 2024‒04‒01
two papers chosen by
Humberto Barreto, DePauw University
  1. Scoring goals: The impact of English Premier League football teams on local university admissions By Carl Singleton; Adrian r. Bell; Andy Chung; J. James Reade; Andrew Urquhart
  2. Experimental evidence on how implicit racial bias affects risk preferences By Auer, Daniel; Ruedin, Didier
  1. By: Carl Singleton (Economics Division, University of Stirling); Adrian r. Bell (Henley Business School, University of Reading); Andy Chung (Department of Economics, University of Reading); J. James Reade (Department of Economics, University of Reading); Andrew Urquhart (Henley Business School, University of Reading)
    Abstract: Anecdotal evidence suggests that co-location with an English Premier League (EPL) football team can boost university recruitment. But when a town or city loses its EPL team, it also loses some of the world’s attention. We test whether the EPL limelight does in fact affect university recruitment in England and Wales. We exploit the sharp annual cutoff between survival and relegation from the EPL, comparing the admissions outcomes of universities that have clear name association either side of that discontinuity. On average, losing association with an EPL team, for just one year after its relegation, significantly reduces a university’s undergraduate year-to-year admissions growth by 4-7 percent. These findings suggest not only that the EPL generates local externalities but also that university executives should support their local teams.
    Keywords: professional football, relegation, local economy, regression-discontinuity design, higher education demand
    JEL: I20 R19 Z20
    Date: 2024–03–18
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2024-02&r=spo
  2. By: Auer, Daniel (University of Bern); Ruedin, Didier (University of Neuchâtel)
    Abstract: We ask how human behavior changes when racial discrimination is costly and when choices are risky. By asking N = 4, 944 participants in Germany to form a soccer team in a series of online experiments, we measure decision-making in an accessible way. Higher costs of discrimination can reduce disparities, but we show that these costs can also trigger implicit racial bias: participants who received an additional financial incentive to select more skilled soccer players outperformed nonincentivized participants and differentiated less based on skin color. However, when confronted with risky choices in a lottery, incentivized participants are more likely to gamble to avoid players with a darker skin color. That is, racial (minority) markers alter the risk preferences of people when their decisions carry costly consequences. This implicit racial bias may partly explain why members of visible minority groups are regularly discriminated against in real-world competitive markets.
    Date: 2023–12–28
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:wrebf&r=spo
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