- Date
- Friday 13 May 2022, 12:00 - 22:00
- Type
- Workshop
- Location
Excelsior Stadium Woudestein
- Ticket information
Participation fee of 50 euros
ECASE is proud to announce its 5th Workshop on 'Using Sports in Economics and Management Research'. The programme includes five interesting presentations by a mix of leading and up-and-coming international speakers. Please join us on 13 May at the Excelsior Stadium.
Programme
| 12:00-13:30 | Lunch |
| Paper Presentations Note: 15 minute break between each presentation | |
| 13:30-14:15 | Steven Salaga (University of Georgia) |
| 14:30-15:15 | Stefan Szymanski (University of Michigan) |
| 15:30-16:15 | Sarah Jewell (University of Reading) |
| 16:30-17:15 | Florian Schütt (Tilburg University) |
| 17:30-18:15 | Sam Hoey (Erasmus School of Economics) |
| 18:30-22:00 | Dinner at the Excelsior Stadium |
Abstracts of papers
Steven Salaga (University of Georgia)
Minorities are underrepresented in top managerial positions and the scant existing research on the topic focuses almost exclusively on labor market entry. Accordingly, very little is known about labor market outcomes for minorities already established in key management positions. We identify an industry where all firms produce the same product and adopt the same management structure and we track labor market dynamics over a 30-year period. We find non-white managers lead teams that perform significant lower overall and also lower relative to the previous manager in the same position, but these same non-white managers also enter into more difficult jobs at hire. We find no significant differences between white and non-white managers in employment spell length. Likewise, there are no significant differences in the likelihood of being rehired into an equivalent management position, but we find it takes non-white managers longer to get rehired into these equivalent positions.
Stefan Szymanski (University of Michigan)
In professional team sports, worker ability and effort are largely observable, since players are paid for work that they undertake in public with considerable frequency (playing games). Economic theory suggests that the principal-agent problem is simple when ability and effort are observable - the worker receives a wage proportional to their marginal revenue product. Moreover, that wage can largely be fixed in advance, since any failure on the part of the worker to deliver the required effort can easily be penalized. This paper looks at the empirical division between fixed and variable elements in the pay of professional football players. Audited pay to employees from the financial statements of the clubs is a close proxy for payments to players, while bookmaker odds reveal the difference between expected outcomes and "surprises". The results show that "surprise" pay is a relatively small share of the total, and that most of the player wages are fixed, consistent with principal-agent theory absent asymmetric information.
Sarah Jewell (University of Reading)
Using evidence from international cricket we explore whether raising awareness of bias reduces bias and leads to corrective behaviour. Previous research suggested that a move to two non-home umpires in test match cricket in 2002 reduced home bias in officiating. In June 2020, a result of the pandemic there was a temporary return to two home umpires, with some matches played behind closed doors. We argue that home umpires were under more scrutiny as a result of this change, alongside an increase in the number of decision review system (DRS) referrals. We compare matches played between November 2017 and September 2021, examining leg before wicket decisions, the likelihood of a home win and DRS decisions. We compare test match cricket to one day international cricket, given the latter commonly had one home umpire prior to the pandemic, and compare matches played behind closed doors
Florian Schütt (Tilburg University)
We study how career concerns affect the risk-taking behavior of head coaches in the National Football League (NFL). We focus on the decision whether to go for it on fourth down, which presents the coach with the choice between a risky and a safe option. A trove of evidence shows that coaches are overly conservative, though eluding explanations why. We develop a simple career-concerns model of the coach's fourth-down decision in which coaches differ in ability and care about their reputation, i.e., the public perception of their ability. The model predicts systematic deviations from win-maximizing behavior and links the prevalence of such deviations to the coach's reputation. Our empirical analysis combines detailed play-by-play data with Twitter data, using coach-specific tweets to construct time-varying measures of coach reputation. We corroborate the prior evidence that coaches' decisions deviate from win maximization. We then relate coaches' systematic deviations from win-maximizing choices to the intensity and sentiments of Twitter activity in the week prior to each game.
Co-authors: Paul Bose and Hannes Ullrich
Sam Hoey (Erasmus School of Economics)
How does the arrival of workers with new skills affect existing workers? We examine how the large influx of Soviet born hockey players in the National Hockey League (NHL) after 1989 affected other players. The Soviet style of hockey was largely based on skilled skating, constant movement, circling and passing. In contrast, the North American play was more individualistic and linear, with higher emphasis on physical strength. Using 50 years of data at the player-game level, we show that (i) the number of penalty minutes per game increased steadily from 1970 to 1989, while decreasing thereafter; (ii) these trends are driven by North American born players while Soviet born players have systematically less penalty minutes per game upon arrival and throughout the post-1989 period; (iii) the number of penalty minutes per game of North American born players decreases systematically with the number of Soviet born players on their team and on their opponents’ team; (iv) the Soviet style of hockey becomes predominant among championship winners over time and irrespectively of the number of Soviet born players on the team. Evidence shows that the new skills brought about by new players are learned by other players and diffuse among other organizations.
Co-authors: Francesco Amodio and Jeremy Schneider
Location
Excelsior Stadium Woudestein
Address: Honingerdijk 110, 3062 NX Rotterdam
Registration and participation fee
Participation in the conference is open to all interested parties, including academics, students, journalists, and industry stakeholders. ECASE charges a participation fee of 50 euros. This includes access to the lunch, dinner, and coffee breaks.
- More information
The ECASE team
Jan van Ours, Thomas Peeters, Stefan Szymanski, Francesco Principe and Sam Hoey- Related links
- Erasmus Centre for Applied Sports Economics (ECASE)