If a firm misleads consumers about the value of its product, does it matter if some consumers are more influenced by the deception than others? We show with a simple model that the answer is a resounding yes. Harm increases unambiguously due to an increase in the heterogeneity of deception, and...

We study a fundamental strategic decision in baseball: when (if at all) to make the “call to the bullpen” and pull the starting pitcher. We first use a simple theoretical model to show that at the optimal time to pull the starter, the pitching change should yield a strict improvement in...

This paper shows the first autocorrelation of basketball shot results is a highly biased and inconsistent estimator of the first autocorrelation of the ex ante probabilities the shots are made. Shot result autocorrelation is close to zero even when shot probability autocorrelation is close to...

Age is often used in law and public policy as a low-cost proxy for competency, maturity, and ability. Age is also used in numerous sport (and non-sport) labor markets to determine workplace eligibility. We exploit the enactment of the women’s professional tennis minimum age rule (AR) in 1995...

US college football's traditional bowl system, and lack of a postseason playoff tournament, has been controversial for years. The conventional wisdom is that a playoff would be a more fair way to determine the national champion, and more fun for fans to watch. The colleges finally agreed to...

The effects of partisan media on political knowledge are theoretically ambiguous. Knowledge effects are important because of their close connection to welfare effects, but the existing empirical literature on knowledge is limited. We study the knowledge effects of the Fox News Channel. Following...

I present a model of affective polarization ("that both Republicans and Democrats increasingly dislike, even loathe, their opponents," Iyengar et al, 2012) via Bayesian inference. Two agents, representing the parties, repeatedly make policy choices. Each choice is based on a balance of concerns...