Articles in this issue:

• Editor’s Note

  Jane Ruseski

• Referees’ Card - Awarding Behavior and Performance Evaluation in Professional Football: The Role of Teams’ Running Distance and Speed

  Pamela Wicker

  Johannes Orlowski

  and Daniel Weimar

  This study examines the effect of football teams’ distance covered and number of intensive runs (>20 km/h) on referees’ card-awarding behavior and their performance evaluation. The empirical analysis uses data from the German Bundesliga (2011–2018), yielding a final sample of n = 2,130 observations on a match-game day basis. Card-awarding behavior is measured with the number of yellow, yellow-red, and red cards awarded. Performance evaluation is captured by Kicker grades. The regression analyses show that greater distance covered by teams is associated with significantly fewer yellow,...Read more

• Retire Statistical Significance? Reevaluation of the Employment Effects of the 2006 World Cup

  Wolfgang Maennig

  Cristina Sattarhoff

  and Peter Stahlecker

  Almost all econometric analyses of mega sporting events show nonsignificant results, i.e., they fail to reject the null hypothesis at the usual α levels of significance. Our contribution takes up the recent critique against the usual handling of the term of significance and qualifies the common interpretation that from a statistical point of view, the effects of mega sporting events are not significant. For this purpose, we use employment data from the World Cup 2006 in Germany. We determine empirical power functions of the relevant t-tests by means of a simulation study with...Read more

• The Effect of Hosting a Super Bowl on Local Debt Capital Markets

  Ted Hayduk III

  Proponents of the Super Bowl claim beneficial ‘development’ effects of hosting the game on local businesses. Thus, one might expect to see corresponding adjustments in the local market for debt capital—the predominant source of business creation and reinvestment—around the time of the Super Bowl. Leveraging a panel dataset of 165 local lenders headquartered in 13 Super Bowl host cities between 1971 and 2011, the analysis finds no consistent trends in the volume of debt capital lent or lenders’ external risk exposure. Somewhat consistent trends were documented for lenders’ internal risk...Read more

• Reacting to Status Threat? Rank Proximity and Performance in Professional Drag Racing

  David M. Yaskewich

  This paper used data from professional drag racing to study how proximity to another competitor in a status ranking affected performance. The one-on-one format of races in National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) tournaments provided a setting to analyze pairs of higher- and lower-ranked drivers when status differentials were either large or small. Based on panel data from the 2009 through 2019 seasons of the NHRA’s Top Fuel and Funny Car divisions, results indicated that rank proximity improved absolute performance on reaction times by higher-ranked drivers. However, this effect only occurred...Read more