The hot hand bias is the widely documented bias toward overestimation of positive serial correlation in sequential events. We test for the hot hand bias in a novel real-world context, NCAA basketball tournament seeds. That is, we examine whether teams that perform relatively well heading into...

Three concepts from psychology -- cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, and confirmation bias -- are perhaps surprisingly closely related, and have been used productively in a variety of fields in economics, more so over time. These concepts are relevant to the field of industrial...

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...

We analyze the effects of pressure on performance using National Basketball Association (NBA) free throw data from the 2002-03 through 2009-10 seasons. We find strong evidence that players choke under pressure – they shoot 5-10% worse than normal in the final seconds of very close games....

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...