Anthology looking for new ways to teach economics, sports or otherwise, does not impress our reviewer

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Kjetil K. Haugen
Molde University College, Norway


Victor A. Matheson & Aju J. Fenn (eds.)
Teaching Sports Economics and Using Sports to Teach Economics
259 pages, paperback
Cheltenham, Glos: Edward Elgar 2022 (Elgar Guides to Teaching)
ISBN 978-1-0353-0817-0

One day the editor of idrottsforum.org, Kjell E. Eriksson, asked me if I wanted to review a new book in Sports Economics. As the title, Teaching Sport Economics and Using Sports to Teach Economics, seemed interesting, I accepted the mission quickly. After reading the book, I am not altogether certain that my YES-decision was the optimal one. I must admit, I expected something slightly different.

As I see it, apart from some extremely interesting theoretical differences between Sports Economics and “normal” Economics, there are two main additional reasons why Sports Economics should be interesting as a tool, as well as a data source for “normal” Economics.

The first is related to uncertainty. According to Thaler and Ziemba (1988), termination points for uncertain outcomes are well defined within sports and gambling markets. The Raw-Air ski-jumping tournament was planned to take place in Norway, between the 10th and the 19th of March 2023. And it did. Furthermore, all uncertainty related to outcomes in this competition – who would jump longest in the ski-flying part for the women (first time); who would win the whole competition for the men, and so on – are by now open information, accessible for anyone. This is not the case in “normal” Economics. Thinking about finance for instance, economic transactions do not take place at predetermined time points. The buyers and sellers of stocks need to come to a mutual agreement on a transaction and the timing of this agreement is not observable for researchers. Consequently, data on uncertainty and transactions and their timing provide a wonderful laboratory for general economists to experiment on.

But the thing that annoys me most is the more or less singular emphasis on baseball. What is it with this game that makes the Americans’ love it so much? I don’t know, and probably never will.

The second, and probably more important reason, is related to the difference between economic data for Sports and for “normal” Economics, respectively. In normal economic activity a lot of reasonably valid financial information are available in accounts, share prices and so on. This is typically not necessarily available at the same precision level in sports. Transfer sums and salaries are simply kept secret. (Recall this corresponds to prices on raw material and human resources in “normal” businesses, which is easily accessible information.) On the other hand, production data, which normally are hidden for consumers in other markets are readily observable in sports. Matches played, goals scored, number of penalties or aggregated length of a World Cup season of ski jumps are not only available, but for people less interested in sports than I am, annoyingly available. Hence, it seems reasonable to state that sports business in a sense is inverse to “normal” business when it comes to availability of data.

I would think this should be a great starting point for a book with the given title. Unfortunately, the book does not take this starting point. So, what’s in it? The book, an edited volume (many authors), chooses a more practically oriented approach. It mainly focuses on how sports data can be used (by teachers) to exemplify general economic problems, or how sports economics as such may be taught.

The book comes in three parts with a total of 17 chapters. Many of the contributors are well known characters on the scene of Sports Economics, for instance John J. Siegfried, Allen R. Sanderson, Peter von Allmen, Brad R. Humphreys, Jane E. Ruseski, Victor A. Matheson, David Berri, and Rodney Fort, and they are responsible for hundreds if not thousands of scientific papers.

As mentioned above, the book is mainly about teaching. A rare topic. A book focusing on how to teach Economics through sports or simply teach Sports Economics is something I have never seen, and this is a good thing. New topics are always interesting. Did the editor and his authors succeed? Now, that is another question.

I believe that books involving pedagogical aspects of any subject should do things right. Sloppiness in such a topic is especially questionable. Let’s look at an example from chapter one.

Figure 1.1 above shows an example of how game theory could apply to sports data (baseball). I would not call myself an expert on the topic of game theory, but as far as I know, imperfect information for (simultaneous) games as shown in the figure must elicit observable strategies (actions) from the players. In this example, guessing is something happening in somebody’s heads, clearly unobservable. I believe the authors mean the players’ (Pitcher and Batter) response to guessing right or wrong. I am definitely no baseball expert, but I guess it is some well proven responses if you are able to guess correctly, perhaps trying to hit the ball hard as hell in the Throw Fastball, Guess Fastball case. A better approach would hence be to define the strategies for the batter as Bat as if you receive a Fastball, Bat as if you receive a Curveball.

Furthermore, as far as I know, a game needs players, strategies, and payoffs as a minimum. Figure 1.1 above, contains only payoffs for one of the players, the Batter. The only case where it is normal to define payoffs for only one of the players are zero-sum games. Clearly this cannot be a zero-sum game. What should negative payoffs of -0.6, -0.4 and -0.2 mean? No, this must be a one-sum game, payoffs are probabilities. And finally, what is the hitter in the figure title? I guess it should be the Batter. That is, a figure like Figure 2.2 should replace the figure in the text.

Sloppiness in game definitions is rarely a good thing, neither for students nor for teachers.

So, what else is annoying in the book? In many chapters the argument of sport popularity as a “help” to recruit students for economics courses is used. I do not like this. First of all, students are not fools, and I do not believe that trying to lure them to learn economic theory by using sport examples is neither a good, nor an honest strategy.

Then again, what is good about this book? I have two distinct favorite chapters. Chapter 17 by Rodney Fort is a definite “star-chapter”. Here, Rodney describes three classroom exercises, all in game/auction theory (maybe I am biased?). All are very instructive and funny and are well worth a try.

I also liked Chapter 5 by Brad R. Humphreys and Jane E. Ruseski. They tell the story of how modern empirical research may learn a story from Computer Science. This is a very concrete and helpful story on the importance of choosing sensible file and folder names on a computer in order to replicate studies and possible extend them years after the were originally conducted. Having a PhD in Computer Science myself, I may of course be biased here as well, but I found this chapter helpful.

(Shutterstock/Keeton Gale)

So, would I recommend this book? On the positive side, it is a novel topic for scientific books. Novelty is always of interest for researchers/teachers. As opposed to the book I previously reviewed on this site (Uncertainty of Outcome, in Sports and in Collections of Scholarly Papers) the contributions are more or less related to the title, which also is good.

Above, I gave you some irritating examples. And, of course there are more of those. Many of the contributions are related to how, for instance, media could be used in (general) teaching. Some are quite banal as I see it, and relatively uninteresting.

But the thing that annoys me most is the more or less singular emphasis on baseball. What is it with this game that makes the Americans’ love it so much? I don’t know, and probably never will. For a book with the given title, some notions, examples, and stories related to other sports would, in my opinion, greatly improve the text. Yes, there is a little on American football, a little more on basketball, (nothing on ice-hockey by the way) and I think soccer is mentioned once. Anyway, as a European with minor interest in baseball, most contributions quickly move my interest level towards zero. As such, I would not recommend the book to the average idrottsforum.org reader. However, if you are interested in US sports, especially baseball, and teaching economics, and in need of some research and teaching tricks, this could be a book for you.

Copyright © Kjetil K. Haugen

Reference

[1]  R.H. Thaler and W.T. Ziemba, Parimutuel betting markets: Racetracks and lotteries, J. Econ. Perspect. 2 (1988), 161–174.

Table of Content

Introduction to Teaching Sports Economics and Using Sports to Teach Economics
Victor A. Matheson and Aju J. Fenn

Part I Using Sports to Teach Economics

      1. Integrating sports into economics teaching
        John J. Siegfried and Allen R. Sanderson
      2. Using sports-related empirical research to teach critical reading skills in intermediate microeconomics
        Peter von Allmen
      3. Using ESPN 30 for 30 to teach economics – revisited
        Abdullah Al-Bahrani and Darshak Patel
      4. Uncovering bias: using sports to teach about the economics of discrimination
        Jill S. Harris
      5. Supervising sports economics research
        Brad R. Humphreys and Jane E. Ruseski

Part II Teaching Sports Economics

      1. Using guest speakers and day trips to teach sports economics
        Aju J. Fenn
      2. Sports and the law: using court cases to teach sports economics
        Victor A. Matheson
      3. Making sports economics inclusive: why you aren’t teaching sports economics well if women are not part of your story
        David Berri
      4. Incorporating media into the sports economics curriculum
        Jadrian Wooten

Part III Classroom Activities for Sports Economics – Moving Away from Chalk and Talk

      1. The jigsaw reading
        Victor A. Matheson
      2. Starting point bias and final offer arbitration: a classroom experiment
        Victor A. Matheson
      3. Randomness and the hot hand fallacy
        Joshua Congdon-Hohman and Victor A. Matheson
      4. This class is a Kahoot! Using Kahoot! to test student knowledge in class
        Jadrian Wooten
      5. Arbitration in the classroom: a classroom experiment to model MLB’s salary arbitration
        Amber Brown
      6. Measuring productivity in Major League Baseball
        Stacey Brook
      7. Teaching marginal revenue product using Moneyball
        Dustin White and Jadrian Wooten
      8. Economical sports economics classroom activities
        Rodney Fort

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