Nancy Burnett

Since the early days of racial integration in baseball, the issue of fan prejudice has been in question. Evidence of fan reaction to an individual players' race, however, has been nearly impossible to distinguish through means such as game attendance or ticket revenue. Looking at baseball card valuation, however, allows us to parse out effects of race from other variables that contribute to a card's value. We use the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to explore an original data set consisting of all single-player, nonpitcher baseball cards issued in 1969 and 2 years of pricing data on those cards (1981 and 2008) to find evidence of a reduction in discriminatory preferences among card collectors.

Keefer’s recent article in the Journal of Sports Economics, ‘‘Compensation discrimination for defensive players: applying quantile regression to the National Football League market for linebackers,’ ’ finds wage discrimination in the National Football League market for linebackers. Following Keefer, we examine both ordinary least squares and quantile analysis, as well as Oaxaca and quantile treatment effects decomposi-tions though we explore the market not only for linebackers but also for offensive linemen and limit our study to rookie players. We would expect to find stronger evidence of discrimination, as rookies are captured sellers. However, we find no pattern of discrimination against Blacks.

Keefer’s recent article in the Journal of Sports Economics, ‘‘Compensation discrimination for defensive players: applying quantile regression to the National Football League market for linebackers,’ ’ finds wage discrimination in the National Football League market for linebackers. Following Keefer, we examine both ordinary least squares and quantile analysis, as well as Oaxaca and quantile treatment effects decomposi-tions though we explore the market not only for linebackers but also for offensive linemen and limit our study to rookie players. We would expect to find stronger evidence of discrimination, as rookies are captured sellers. However, we find no pattern of discrimination against Blacks.

We examine stadium attendance for the Mallards baseball team, a nonprofessional, summer collegiate baseball team in the Northwoods League in Madison, Wisconsin. Not only can this analysis be used in a principles course as a case study to explain demand shifts in a perfectly elastic supply situation, it also highlights this team's unique experience of having game attendance at a rate far exceeding any other team in their league, even surpassing that of some major league baseball teams. INTRODUCTION Teaching a principles of economics course leads inevitably to an exposition of Supply and Demand curves and their elasticities. Many of us struggle to find real world examples of the polar cases (perfectly elastic demand or supply) to present to our students . In this paper, we have developed a model using perfectly elastic supply in stadium attendance for a local non-professional baseball team. The team under consideration here is the Madison Mallards, which played for the first time ...

INTRODUCTION Over the last few decades the US school system has received much attention from researchers and administrators on a variety of issues such as incentive pay and accountability (Holmstrom & Milgrom, 1991; Kane & Staiger, 2002); school size (Lee & Smith, 1997; Umphrey, 2002); school consolidations (Antonucci, 1999); curriculum decisions (Goodlad & Su, 1992); education accessibility (Dunn, 1992); and overall school reform (Allen & Dale, 1995). The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 motivates further research in to these areas of study. We bring together several facets of these discussions by examining the cross implications of optimal school size and consolidations with incentive teacher pay and accountability in the classroom. A general trend over the past century, and the main motivation for our inquiry, has been the wide-scale consolidation of elementary and secondary schools and districts. Enrollment per school has substantially increased since 1900, from 62.44 to 506.29 ...

INTRODUCTION The study of racial discrimination in professional sports has been an actively studied topic for decades, though much of this work has been done in sports other than the National Football League (NFL). However, the NFL itself has become highly conscious of discrimination in both hiring and compensation by race since the early 2000's. The NFL created a diversity committee in October of 2002 expressly to hunt for discriminatory practices and offer recommendations to reduce racial discrimination of all types in the league. Recommendations from the diversity committee included training and development programs aimed expressly at minorities. For instance, one recommendation, the so-called 'Rooney Rule' named after the chair of the committee Dan Rooney, ensures that at least one minority coach must be considered for every high level coaching position that opens in the league. The opportunity to discriminate against either coaches or players, however, cannot be ful...

INTRODUCTION As is the case at most, if not all, Economics Departments, the University of Wisconsin--Oshkosh (UWO) has long had coursework in International Economics. Our course, however, was a single semester course that incorporated both international trade and international finance. This was due primarily to the fact that the University has a College of Business that offers coursework in international and domestic finance, distinct from coursework offered by the department of economics. Having this single course in international area studies served as our only international offering for many years. Even though it was very popular among students, no additional coursework in the area was offered until after the turn of the millennium. The internationalization of the university in general and our department in specific has taken several different paths. One important change has been in the way we teach even non-'international' courses, along with a proliferation of internati...

The Northwoods league, a summer collegiate baseball league in the US Midwest, has long been thought to show strong competitive balance. The players are unpaid and can only play while maintaining college eligibility so that inter-team competitiveness should be high as teams cannot “buy” talent. We examine several measures of competitive balance to demonstrate the competitiveness of this league across time and compared to major league sports. We find, confirming Schmidt (2002) that league expansion increases competitiveness and that, in general, this league compares quite favorably to major leagues.

To better understand the degree to which students enrolled in principles of macroeconomics are exposed to fundamental microeconomic concepts, we survey twenty popular textbooks. Using the TUCE guidelines as a framework, we categorize the microeconomic content of the textbooks by topic and amount of coverage. We find that for the significant percentage of undergraduates who take only a single semester of macroeconomics, these students are left without enough exposure to the core concepts of microeconomics – including ones that underpin macroeconomic models. On its own, we hope our detailed survey will prove useful to instructors who must select between a myriad of seemingly similar textbooks. In addition, we make a modest proposal for how instructors could include some specific microeconomic content at low opportunity cost.

The results of a two semester experiment teaching business statistics as a computer lab based course, rather than a lecture based (or lecture based with lab component) course, shows that students show significant improvement in data interpretation and analysis at the cost of a slight degradation of probability technique performance. The evidence is from over 200 students (representing 3 lab sections and 1 control group section) on 5 exam questions and the course capstone project. Indirect assessments further suggest that students recognize the value of the lab approach both from the immediate rewards of deeper conceptual understanding to the longer lasting effects from future use of the techniques. INTRODUCTION As instructors, we should be concerned with the results of our teaching (meaning student learning) rather than any perceived glory or status involved in the method of our teaching. I mention this as I believe that the headlong rush to incorporate technology into the classroom...

... For example, a 1910 Honus Wagner card recently sold for $640500 (auction at Christie's in 1996). ... Other studies, for instance Tregarthen (1992) and McGarrity, Palmer and Poitras (1999), have also explored the market for baseball cards for evidence of discrimination finding ...

ABSTRACT This paper investigates enrollment patterns in college courses using various explanatory variables such as instructor gender, time of day and student ratings from the site RateMyProfessors.com. Empirical results from this study suggest no gender preference and the expected time preferences (middle of the day and evening as desirable and an avoidance of Friday classes). Beyond these expected results, there is evidence that some of the website ratings do hold explanatory power for enrollment patterns for my university. In particular, the rating 'ease' is statistically significant while ratings for 'overall quality,' 'clarity,' and the measure of sexual attractiveness are not. (JEL A22, A11) (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) INTRODUCTION Enrollment patterns have long been assumed to exist, as any current or former department chair in charge of scheduling can tell you, but have not been formally studied in the literature. Among the assumptions commonly made at this university, are timing preferences against early morning and Friday classes, for instance. Those timing preferences may vary slightly from region to region or among student cohorts, but anecdotal evidence suggests that students prefer classes in the middle of the day more than at any other time, with additional preference for evening courses, although the 'evidence' for such a pattern can only be found in defacto section offerings. Indeed, there are so many courses offered in the middle of the day that departments at the university under study are not allowed to create more than 10% of their sections to begin between the hours of 9:10 and 11:30, though this may reflect teaching preferences rather than student preferences. Aside from preferring these peak hours, both students and faculty may attempt to avoid Friday classes in order to facilitate longer weekends. A few students, perhaps non-traditionals or those that work full time, may have a slight preference for early sections or evening sections so they can be 'shoehorned' into already busy lives. There has been little documentation of these effects however. This paper seeks to examine enrollment patterns exploring both timing issues as well as information regarding individual teacher characteristics, using an original data set drawn from a single, Mid- Western, State University of approximately 11,000 undergraduates. In the past, teaching characteristics other than gender have been difficult, if not nearly impossible, to obtain in any standardized way, with the possible exception of some fraternity/sorority informal ratings available only to members. With the existence, and rapid growth, of the various professor ratings sites on the internet, ratings of individual professors have become easily available and standardized. The largest of these internet sites is www.RateMyProfessor.com. One of the unique aspects to this website information is its ease of access to students planning course and section enrollments. Traditional student survey results are difficult to access and few students are even aware of how to do so. Indeed, what stimulated the idea for this project was the overwhelming student response to a pre-class discussion on how students choose classes/instructors. An overwhelming majority of students reported that they "always" or "often" checked www.Ratemyprofessors.com (henceforth referred to as the website) before they enrolled for classes and not one student reported checking on campus rating results. Granted this 'evidence' is very anecdotal and in no way can be construed as proof of student behavior, the results of this particular pre-class discussion caused this researcher to begin considering carefully the power of the website on class enrollments The information from this website is far easier to obtain and has fewer (and more direct) categories than our on-campus surveys. Furthermore, these ratings are completely uniform, unlike the college- and even discipline- specific surveys used in some instances at our University. …

INTRODUCTION As is the case at most, if not all, Economics Departments, the University of Wisconsin--Oshkosh (UWO) has long had coursework in International Economics. Our course, however, was a single semester course that incorporated both international trade and international finance. This was due primarily to the fact that the University has a College of Business that offers coursework in international and domestic finance, distinct from coursework offered by the department of economics. Having this single course in international area studies served as our only international offering for many years. Even though it was very popular among students, no additional coursework in the area was offered until after the turn of the millennium. The internationalization of the university in general and our department in specific has taken several different paths. One important change has been in the way we teach even non-'international' courses, along with a proliferation of international classroom offerings, a new International Emphasis within the major itself, faculty led study tours, a partnership with a foreign university, a dramatic increase in the internationalization of faculty experiences, additional international hires, and an ongoing faculty exchange program. Discussion of each of these areas, as well as the phenomenal growth in the popularity of the economics major, follows. THE UNIVERSITY AND DEPARTMENT The University of Wisconsin--Oshkosh is a mid sized, comprehensive university located in the upper Midwest. We have approximately 10,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduate students, organized into four colleges (Letters & Sciences, Business, Nursing, and Education and Human Services). The department of economics is currently housed in the College of Business, which has approximately 1,700 undergraduates, 640 graduate students and 50 faculty members. The department of economics faculty at UWO consists of 10 full time equivalent members, all of whom are either tenured or on tenure track, with an additional course or two of adjunct time per year, depending upon funding and need. Of these ten individuals, we have a good balance by age and gender (four full professors, four associate professors, and two assistant professors comprised of seven males and 3 females). All have PhDs. There have also been changes in the faculty since 1994. In 1994 we have had six retirements, their replacements bringing in new faculty members with international experience. (1) The internationalization of the major began with these faculty changes and has continued unabated since that time, culminating in the creation of a new emphasis in the major. These changes are further discussed in the following section. The economics department has grown markedly in the last dozen years. Chart 1 shows this dramatic growth from 19 declared economics majors in the Spring of 1995 to 162 majors in the Fall of 2006. Before 1994, the College of Business required all majors, in any sub-field, to complete the entire economics core sequence, once that requirement was dropped we experienced a reduction in majors. (2) INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE FACULTY The department has long had a strongly international background. Two of our faculty members have formal training in the discipline of International Economics and/or Economic Development, not unlike many faculties of our size. Out of ten faculty members six have extensive international experiences, and three are foreign born. Having foreign born faculty members hardly makes UWO unique, indeed in this we would believe that very many Universities have the same experience. One of those formally trained international economists is from Pakistan, coming to us in 1982 and another is from Belarus, arriving in 2001. What has set us apart is the development of our international expertise with this faculty composition as our base. …

ABSTRACT Others have analyzed the pricing structure of baseball memorabilia for evidence of discrimination regarding player race with mixed results. The authors' 2004 paper included a fame component to the Fort and Gill (2000) censored Tobit model, which came up significant and swamped any racial differences in card pricing. In this paper, we examine how the effects of a player's race as well as fame on card price has changed across time. We use our original data set covering all single player cards (of hitters that played in a given year) across the entire decade of the 1960's, comprising some 2,770 cards. Analysis of these data suggest that there is a change in the way that player race affects card price, an effect we refer to as the 'novelty effect. ' Further, we investigate cards from a more recent year (some 373 cards of players who played during 1986) to determine if current era cards still have any trace of race impacts on price. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) INTRODUCTION Over the last 4 decades, baseball trading cards have moved from the shoebox under the bed to the showpiece of sport collectors. What had been a childhood hobby, collecting baseball cards that came with sticks of sugary sweet bubble gum, has become big business. Cards that once were used to make special noise effects on bikes tires are now investments in 'sports memorabilia.' Some of these cards can now sell for millions of dollars. For example, a 1910 Honus Wagner card recently sold for $2.35 Million ("$2.35M card, but how much is the bubblegum?" USA Today, 3/29/2007). Card collecting is clearly no longer just a hobby of preadolescent males, it is now a business, an investment for the buyer. The wide market for these trading cards has provided economists with a playground of data to examine how the value placed on player's cards is affected both by the player's skill and, possibly, by the player's race. For instance, if collectors display prejudice against non-white players, then cards of players with similar stats but of different races would presumably sell for different amounts. Alternatively, it may not be each individual buyer who is demonstrating prejudice so much as buyers jointly assuming that other buyers will display prejudice, thereby affecting price. This is something like England's famous "Page Two Girls" beauty contest where people are asked to pick what other people will think is the most attractive girl. At any rate, the result should be the same in this case: racial discrimination against non-white players should show up as reduced card price, all else equal. What we bring to this discussion is two-fold. Initially, we examine how the impact of race may have changed across time as we have reason to believe that attitudes towards race may well have changed. Additionally, following our own work (Burnett and Van Scyoc, 2009), we bring the added dimension of a player's fame to the analysis. Indeed, we suspect that famous players' cards hold value distinct from racial impacts. If there is a racial bias on the part of card collectors it would most likely be seen in the cards of players not so famous and we feel we should include this idea into the academic literature. Resale value of a particular player's card is paramount to today's buyer, which brings us to the issue of pricing these cards. Any number of player characteristics could affect the price of a given card, though chief among these elements would include demonstrated player skill (stats) as well as player race. Unobservable characteristics, such as off-field behavior (such as steroid use) may well influence the demand for cards, but since our primary data set is from the 1960's, one might expect that little of these types of influences are likely to remain in buyers minds. Though, by looking at pricing both in current markets (based on prices from 2008) and from previous markets (1981, a year that would have seen most of the players from the I960' s would have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, for instance but close enough to the time the players were on the field and well known among collectors), we may be able to ferret out changes in collector behavior. …

This paper provides a lesson on compounding interest calculation as applied to retirement planning using an EXCEL spreadsheet. Detailed instructions for instructor preparation, a student assignment, the class demonstration and various methods of student debriefing are included. An ideal venue for this lesson would be an introductory finance course not specifically targeted to business majors, though this learning module fits into any course that includes a section on personal financial management or one that explores compounding interest and present/future value calculations. The basic lesson is designed for lower division courses, but additional material is provided to make it more appropriate for upper division courses including material on various investment vehicles, social security regulations and mortgage calculations. While the lesson is designed for students with minimal exposure to EXCEL, there are extensions to the lesson appropriate for students with more EXCEL experience...

Gender has become a “hot” research topic in recent years and has begun mak-ing its way into the classroom (Conrad 1992). Interest in gender issues has spread, but only a small proportion of economics departments beyond the few top national liberal arts colleges include ...

Gender has become a “hot” research topic in recent years and has begun mak-ing its way into the classroom (Conrad 1992). Interest in gender issues has spread, but only a small proportion of economics departments beyond the few top national liberal arts colleges include ...

An original data set built from all 32 National Football League (NFL) teams, covering 2000–2009, is used to produce a production function for professional football. We use spending on salaries, divided between offensive and defensive players, as inputs to produce season ...