Catalyzing Sports Fans (and the Rest of Us)--early draft now available

From Dan Markel at PrawfsBlawg:

I'm happy to say that my co-authors Howard Wasserman, Michael McCann, and I have a short shitty first draft to read -- Catalyzing Sports Fans (and the Rest of Us) -- if anyone's interested. The paper is *not* about retributive justice in any dimension. It's about sports, free speech, contracts, taxes, crowds, opera, charity, and jurisdictional competition, etc. In short, it's about nothing I know anything about. So I hope you'll see fit to set me straight. Let me know via email if you'd like to read an early version please. I've pasted our working abstract below.

In most major professional sports, the desires of fans are of secondary significance. We think this could be different, and we offer two variations on a theme in which fans can be more influential stakeholders, particularly with respect to player trades or retention deals. We propose the development of Fan Action Committees (FACs).

Whether through enriching players directly, or through contributions to a player’s foundation or favorite charitable cause (our preferred approach), we examine the uneasy case for FACs. After anticipating objections and obstacles under current rules to their development, we offer some reflections about how the FAC model can transform, well, just about all other realms of human endeavor where third parties are benefited or harmed by agreements between two other parties.

I can confirm Dan's description of the first draft as short, though in the edited words of former Vice President John Nance Garner, I'd like to think it's at least as good as a warm bucket of spit.

Employee Discipline: Evidence from Basketball Referees

I recently completed a short paper quantitatively analyzing officiating in the NBA.  The paper is currently under review at an academic journal and posted on SSRN for free download.  Given its "working paper" status, any comments would be appreciate.  A link to the paper is here.  The abstract is below.  Zach Lowe of Grantland highlighted the paper in this piece.

Given confidentiality issues and the proprietary nature of the underlying data, outsiders rarely have the opportunity to test the impetus, impact, and efficacy of employee discipline in the workplace. However, the transparency of NBA basketball officiating allows for such an inquiry, as long-time referee Joey Crawford was involved in a much-publicized 2007 on-court incident with Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs that resulted in a lengthy suspension. Shortly after the suspension, Duncan spoke of Crawford’s “personal vendetta” against him and expressed hope that he and his team would “get a fair shake” and avoid any “backlash” from other referees. This paper analyzes the interaction between Crawford (and other referees) and the Spurs team and reveals that Duncan’s concerns were illusory in 2007 and remain spurious (pun intended) today. In the course of analyzing every Spurs game (N = 1038) over the course of eleven seasons, neither Crawford nor any of his fellow referees exhibited any systematic bias against Duncan or his team.