Racial Integration as an Innovation: Empirical Evidence from Sports Leagues

Goff, Brian; McCormick, Robert; Tollison, Robert D.

doi:10.1257/000282802760015586

Cited by 80 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Moreover, sports 3 data are readily available and they are measured much more precisely than most economic data. This has led to studies on racial discrimination (Gwartney and Haworth, 1974;Kahn and Sherer, 1988;Nardinelli and Simon, 1990;Stone and Warren, 1999;Szymanski, 2000;Kanazawa and Funk, 2001;and Goff, McCormick and Tollison, 2002), efficiency of the betting market (Zuber, Gandar and Bowers, 1985;Sauer, Brajer, Ferris and Marr, 1988;Golec and Tamarkin, 1991;Dixon and Coles, 1997;and Gray and Gray, 1997), comparison of betting markets and financial markets (Levitt, 2004), the effect of labor strikes on consumer demand (Schmidt and Berri, 2004), preferences under risk (Julien and Salanié, 2000), mixed strategy equilibria Wooders, 2000, 2001;Chiappori, Levitt and Groseclose, 2002;and PalaciosHuerta and Volij, 2008), incentive effects (Ehrenberg and Bognanno, 1990), rationality (Gandar, Zuber, O'Brian and Russo, 1988), optimal labor contracts (Lazear and Rosen, 1981), control of externalities (Carlton, Frankel and Landes, 2004), favoritism (Garicano, Palacios-Huerta and Prendergast, 2005), maximizing behavior of firms (Romer, 2006;and Adams, 2006), and so on.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The efficiency of top agents: An analysis through service strategy in tennis

Klaassen

Magnus

2009

Journal of Econometrics

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We consider the question whether top tennis players in a top tournament (Wimbledon) employ an optimal (efficient) service strategy. While we show that top players do not, in general, follow an optimal strategy, our principal result is that the estimated inefficiencies are not large: the inefficiency regarding winning a point on service is on average 1.1% for men and 2.0% for women, implying that–by adopting an efficient service strategy–players can (on average) increase the probability of winning a match by 2.4%-points for men and 3.2%-points for women. While the inefficiencies may seem small, the financial consequences for the efficient player at Wimbledon can be substantial: the expected paycheck could rise by 18.7% for men and even by 32.8% for women. We use these findings to shed some light on the question of whether economic agents are successful optimizers

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The efficiency of top agents: An analysis through service strategy in tennis

Klaassen

Magnus

2009

Journal of Econometrics

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“…In other words, owners who chose to integrate had to assemble a winning team to offset the potential losses from consumer discrimination against black players. Indeed, Goff et al (2002) view integration as an economic innovation that allowed owners to reorganize their 'firm' in a more productive manner. This interpretation fits well with the Austrian theory of entrepreneurship.…”

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confidence: 99%

Put me in, Coach, I’m ready to play

et al. 2007

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This paper explores the connection between discrimination and entrepreneurship. To pursue this inquiry we focus on the integration of black players in Major League Baseball (MLB). MLB team owners, acting as entrepreneurs, had to weigh the benefits of integrating versus the costs of alienating consumers who had a taste for discrimination against hiring blacks. We find that the owners whose teams could profit by contending for the league pennant with the addition of black players were the ones who were willing to take the risk of integrating, although integration often stood in contrast to revealed consumer preferences. In addition to illuminating the mechanism through which integration took place, we offer a general understanding of how the costs and benefits associated with consumers' taste for discrimination can change via entrepreneurial activities.

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“…Sport data have been recently applied to the study of a variety of important problems such as racial integration (Goff, McCormick, and Tollison 2002), competition in the workplace (Brown 2011), national well-being (Kavetsos and Szymanski 2010), national culture on individual violence (Miguel, Saiegh, and Satyanath 2008), favoritism and corruption (Garicano, Palacios-Huerta, and Prendergast 2005) and behavioral biases (Gauriot and Page (2018);Miller and Sanjurjo (2018)). Related to this paper, Apesteguia and Palacios-Huerta (2010) use data on football penalty kicks to identify the effect of psychological pressure on the probability of scoring, depending on the order of kicks.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

You'll Never Walk Alone: The Effect of Moral Support on Performance

2018

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This study presents evidence on the role of moral support on performance in a competitive environment. We take advantage of an unusual change in the Argentinean football legislation. In August 2013, as a matter of National security, the Argentinean government forced all the teams of the first division to play their games with only home team supporters. Supporters of the visiting teams were not allowed to be in stadiums during league games. We estimate the effect of this exogenous variation of supporters on team performance, and we find that visiting teams are, on average, about 20% more likely to lose without their supporters. Moreover, we find that the lack of supporters of the visiting team increased the score differential between the home team and the visitor. The effect of the ban is stronger for big teams, who have the highest number of supporters when playing away. In addition, we find no evidence of changes of referees' decisions due to the ban, suggesting that the effect on team performance is due to the loss of moral support rather than a change in referees hostility. As placebo test, we run the analysis using contemporaneous cup matches, where the visiting team supporters were allowed to attend. We find no effect of the ban on the cup games, which provides additional empirical support to our findings. Our results offer unique and novel empirical evidence of the importance on moral support on performance.JEL: D01, D91, J24.

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Racial Integration as an Innovation: Empirical Evidence from Sports Leagues

Cited by 80 publications

References 7 publications

The efficiency of top agents: An analysis through service strategy in tennis

The efficiency of top agents: An analysis through service strategy in tennis

Put me in, Coach, I’m ready to play

You'll Never Walk Alone: The Effect of Moral Support on Performance

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