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....

Transfers are big business in association football. This paper develops a generalized additive mixed model that aids managers in predicting how a football player is expected to perform in a new team. It does so by using event-level data from the Spanish and the Colombian football leagues. Using...

We find an inverted relation between a player's birthday and the likelihood of receiving the Ballon d'Or (awarded to the best football player in the world). We develop a multi-period skill formation model with selection into elite education. We show that those born late (underdogs) need to work...