Andrew W. Nutting

The Determinants of Electronic Textbook Use Among College Students

Electronic books are a fast-growing component of the publishing industry. Sales of electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) are growing, but at a slower rate. In this research, we use data from an undergraduate college student survey to estimate the determinants of e-textbook use. Students who are younger, lower-income, and graduated from larger high schools are more likely to use e-textbooks. Furthermore, e-textbooks are more likely to be used by students in technically-oriented fields, especially in business, where electronic materials are often required. An environment of continued growth in student technical competence with information technology, continued increases in college cost and a reduction in professor resistance to e-textbooks would bode well for growth in their use.

Travel Costs in the NBA Production Function

This article empirically determines whether travel factors affect National Basketball Association (NBA) teams’ production of wins, offense, and defense. Distance traveled has little impact on win production. Teams with fewer days since their last game produce fewer wins, with an especially large effect for visiting teams in the first half of the season. Game frequency costs accrue in the second half of the season, significantly hurting visiting teams’ win production. In the second half of seasons, win production increases when teams play in time zones to the east and decreases in time zones to the west of their home time zone.

Community college transfer students’ probabilities of baccalaureate receipt as a function of their prevalence in four‐year colleges and departments

The present paper determines whether community college transfer students have higher baccalaureate rates when they enroll in four‐year colleges and departments that have larger shares of transfer students. Transfers attending non‐technical campuses with larger shares of transfers have higher eight‐year baccalaureate rates, but within‐campus increases in share transfers do not increase transfer graduation rates. Transfers in departments with large shares of transfer students have significantly lower graduation rates, but natives in such departments do not. Within‐department increases in transfer student presence are positively correlated with transfer eight‐year graduation rates and negatively correlated with native eight‐year graduation rates, indicating an opportunity for efficiency gains if influxes of transfers are separated from natives.

Tuition and the outcomes of community college attendance: simulations for academic-program and occupational-program students

I estimate the impacts of higher 2-year and 4-year tuition on the outcomes of community college attendance. Higher 2-year tuition is associated with higher dropout rates in both academic and occupational programs and lower rates of terminal degree receipt in occupational programs. Dropout increases are especially large in late semesters and are stronger among men than women. Higher 4-year tuition reduces dropout rates in the early semesters of both academic and occupational programs. Much of the effects of tuition on academic-program enrollment disappear when including campus fixed effects.

Immediate Effects of on-the-job Training and its Intensity: Team Defensive Production During NBA Homestands and Roadtrips

National Basketball Association home teams produce more defense and more wins the more consecutive games they play at home, suggesting home games serve as on-the-job training for future games during the same homestand. Home teams produce less defense and fewer wins the more days off during a homestand, suggesting training intensity increases productivity. A possible explanation is that teams develop communication skills specific to their home environments and/or adapt to referee bias toward home teams as homestands progress. Homestand training significantly weakens as the season progresses. Visiting teams show similar, but weaker, training effects with respect to roadtrip length and productivity.

Time Zones, Game Start Times, and Team Performance Evidence From the NBA

Research has found that, controlling for team quality, National Basketball Association visiting teams win more often when playing to the east of their home time zones and less often when playing to the west. We reaffirm this finding for 1991-2002. We find that only these seasons’ day games, and not their far more frequent night games, featured a significant relationship between time zone and visiting team win probability. We hypothesize that some of these day-game effects were biological in origin. The 2002-2013 seasons featured no significant relationship between time zones and visiting team win probability for either day or night games.

Customer Discrimination and Fernandomania

This article tests for customer discrimination by examining attendance boosts associated with the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher and Mexican national Fernando Valenzuela. Fernando’s starts were associated with higher attendance at games beginning in 1981 and as late as 1987, and as late as 1985 for games outside of Los Angeles. Attendance increased more when games were played in Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)s with larger Mexican populations. Attendance also increased more in MSAs with larger non-Mexican Hispanic populations, especially when such Hispanics did not claim a specific Latin American country of origin. Larger Asian populations led to significantly lower attendance at Fernando’s starts.