Project – data analysis

Economics 2182A-570

Economics of Sports

Fall 2024

-     You may work in groups of two, three, or four students.

-     Hard copy due in class by 11:45 AM on Wednesday November 20th

-     Late assignment (later than Nov 25 in class) will not be accepted and will receive 0.

-     The length of this assignment should be between 3 to 5 pages (12pts font size, double spaced, excluding tables, graphs, and references).

-     Loose pages that are not stapled will not be accepted.

-     You will be presenting your work (10-15 minutes) on the last two weeks of the semester.

1.    Pick a topic of your interest in Economics of sports (main thesis).

a.    Some (possibly boring) examples of topics - Salary vs performance of players, performance vs spending of teams, Discrimination in sports, Performance vs certain characteristics of players, College stats vs professional performance, Draft and combine results vs performance, Tax difference by states, Esports, Star players on team performance, Star players on team revenue

b.    Choose a topic that is original and interesting. You will be rewarded for interesting topics and penalized for lazy topics (e.g. topics used as examples in class).

2.    Do preliminary research, and clearly show why the topic is interesting. (motivation, previous literature, importance, etc)

a.    Some examples of preliminary research

i.    Newspaper articles

ii.   Academic journal articles

3.    Find a dataset. It could be adataset someone else made, or you could make your own dataset using excel (just like the excel file for assignment 1).

a.    Some examples of data source

i.  https://www.basketball-reference.com/

ii.  https://www.baseball-reference.com/

4.    Show summary statistic of the data

a.    Mean, median, standard deviation, shape of distribution, etc

5.    Run regressions to address your topic.

a.    Try different specifications. Try to include different sets of variables and provide justification for the specification of your choice.

b.   Gretl isthe easiest!

6.    Clearly state your finding/implication in conclusion.

a.    What have you found? What have you not found?

b.    What does it mean?

7.   Try to connect your findings to an economics theory.

a.    Why is it the way you found in the data?

b.    Is there any economic theory behind your result?

8.    Proofread your paper to be free of typos and errors.

9.    Include data tables and graphs as appendix.

10. Include a separate reference page for all references and citations. Using someone else’sidea without citation is plagiarism.