The use of a taser by law enforcement can substitute for either a gun (a more-violent technology) or a mildly-violent technology (such as pepper spray or hands-on tactics). Which is used affects both the severity of harm when used and the amount of resistance, which affects how often it must be...

Our paper analyzes the interplay of organizational demography with the propensity to adopt an innovative practice. In particular, we examine how the demographical composition of professional German football teams influenced the adoption of the chain-defense-system (?Viererkette?) as well as the...

We explore how umpires' racial/ethnic preferences are expressed in their evaluation of Major League Baseball pitchers. Controlling for umpire, pitcher, batter and catcher fixed effects and many other factors, strikes are more likely to be called if the umpire and pitcher match race/ethnicity....

In view of the structural changes experienced by Brazilian football as a whole, which is becoming better regulated and more transparently managed, it is necessary to examine the factors that now determine the attendance at football matches. This paper aims to examine the demand for tickets in...

Previous research on professional golf has estimated reduced-form models in which earnings are a function of skills measured as year-long averages. Using individual, tournament-level data, this article makes three improvements. First, the use of tournament-level data removes measurement error in...

The National Hockey League (NHL) in 1999-2000 changed its rules for games that are tied at the end of regulation time. The old rules called for the team to be awarded two points for a win, one for a tie, and zero for a loss. The league felt that play was too conservative during overtime because...

In this paper we study how pressure affects individual’s behavior. For this purpose we use sports data, where the attendance is a proxy for pressure, to investigate if the number of fans in the stadium affects the performance of the players. We overcome the reverse causality problem by...

Soccer clubs listed on the London Stock Exchange provide a unique way of testing stock price reactions to different types of news. For each firm, two pieces of information are released on a weekly basis: experts’ expectations about game outcomes through the betting odds, and the game outcomes...