James Lambrinos

Are Online Exams an Invitation to Cheat

In this study, the authors use data from two online courses in principles of economics to estimate a model that predicts exam scores from independent variables of student characteristics. In one course, the final exam was proctored, and in the other course, the final exam was not proctored. In both courses, the first three exams were unproctored. If no cheating took place, the authors expected the prediction model to have the same explanatory power for all exams, and, conversely, if cheating occurred in the unproctored exam, the explanatory power would be lower. Their findings are that both across and within class, variations in the R-squared statistic suggest that cheating was taking place when the exams were not proctored.

The Role of Fatigue in NBA Wagering Markets: The Surprising ‘‘Home Disadvantage Situation’’

Factors related to the margin of victory in the National Basketball Association (NBA), in terms of both the actual margin of victory and the projected margin of victory as reflected in point spreads, have been analyzed in many studies. This study investigates whether the NBA wagering market appropriately accounts for the differences in team fatigue when setting point spreads. Prior studies have found that a key component of the well-documented home court advantage is rest. We find that, over a 19-year period, the home team performed poorly against the spread when playing the second of back-to-back games, while the visiting team had 1 or 2 days rest. This poor performance was magnified when the home team had traveled one or two time zones in an easterly direction between the back-to-back games.

Competitive Balance in the Eyes of the Sports Fan Prospective Measures Using Point Spreads in the NFL and NBA

There are many measures of competitive balance in the sports economics literature, each with their strengths and weaknesses. This study uses point spreads to measure competitive balance which has the advantages that they are prospective rather than retrospective and that they are determined by the sports fans and not just the outcome of a game. A total of six measures of competitive balance are developed from point spreads. These measures show a general trend toward improvement in competitive balance in the National Basketball Association over the past 20 years with no clear trend emerging for competitive balance in the National Football League.

Prospective measures of competitive balance: application to money lines in major league baseball

This study examines competitive balance in Major League Baseball (MLB) by looking at the money lines for the games during the regular season. The assertion is that the closer the money lines are to indicating that each team has an equal chance of winning each game, the more competitive balance there is in the league. This study extends the model developed by Bowman et al. (2012), which used point spreads to assess competitive balance in the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA). In this study, money lines for the 1999–2011 seasons were used to develop several measures of competitive balance. The results indicate that competitive balance increased rather substantially during this period. A by-product of this research is to identify the most highly rated team and pitcher. In 2002, New York Yankees were the highest rated team and from the year 2000 Pedro Martinez was the highest rated pitcher.

Salary Determination in the National Hockey League Is Arbitration Efficient

The final-offer arbitration system in baseball has been studied quite extensively, but there has not been an investigation into the effects of the arbitration system used in the National Hockey League (NHL). The goal of this study is to determine if arbitrated salaries in the NHL differ from negotiated salaries. Following the work of Ashenfelter, the objective of arbitrators is to use the same factors in making their arbitration decisions as are used for negotiated salaries. The results show that for forwards and defensemen, arbitrated salaries are not significantly different from negotiated salaries.

Active-Learning Exercises for Principles of Economics Courses

This Web site (http://www.harmon.uconn.edu/Wikispaces.htm) describes using an online drawing program and bulletin board to create active-learning activities for a class on principles of economics. In the activity, the student downloads an initial diagram that sets up a textbook scenario on principles of economics. To finish the activity, the student uses a free online imageediting program to diagram the outcome predicted by economic reasoning and then posts it to a free online bulletin board. The approach of digital drawing and posting is a teaching innovation we have not seen described elsewhere. The Web site presents examples of this activity and a quick-start guide for using SumoPaint.com and WikiSpaces.com. There is flexibility for adjusting the difficulty level of the activity, for courses at high school or college level, by adjusting the information included in the initial diagram. Also, there is flexibility for adjusting the level of student interaction: Students can post individually or as members of a group. They can learn from each other’s posts by posting to a class wiki page and can post constructive comments, or the posts can be made into a wiki page with access restricted to a group or an individual. The user ID need not be identified in the bulletin board. Posts can be made anonymously by using favorite screen names or avatars. The editing software and bulletin board can be used with any textbook and course management software. There is flexibility for adapting the exercise to a range of different classroom formats and varied physical locations of the student. For example, it can be used in an online class where students have time and space to work comfortably on their computer. Or, it can be used in a faceto-face (f2f) classroom where the students have laptops. Then the activity is designed to have minimal drawing demands, and the instructor can display the posted diagrams on an overhead projector and lead a class discussion around them.