Robert J. Lemke

Estimating Attendance at Major League Baseball Games for the 2007 Season

Using games from Major League Baseball’s 2007 season, individual game attendance is estimated using censored normal regression with home-team fixed-effects. Included in the model are several factors affecting attendance, such as divisional and interleague rivalries, that to date have been omitted from the literature. The relationship between attendance and game characteristics is shown to be fundamentally different between small market and large market teams. Attendance is also shown to steadily increase as the probability that the home team will win the game increases, which stands in contrast to the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis that predicts that attendance will eventually decrease if the home team’s chance of winning the game gets too large.

Inter-firm complementarities in R&D: a re-examination of the relative performance of joint ventures

We compare duopoly outcomes between two alternative modes of research and development (RD the reverse holds for high spillovers. When RJVs yield higher technological improvement, they also yield higher industry profit and social welfare.

Skill, parental income, and IV estimation of the returns to schooling

Recently, attention has moved away from using parental background variables, such as parental education, in favour of using institutional features of the education system as instruments when estimating the return to schooling. In this paper, these possible instruments are revisited. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, several specifications of the wage equation are estimated and three types of instruments used - parental education, quarter of birth, and college proximity. It is shown that under some specifications - in particular, by including parental income and individual skill in the wage equation - parental education appears to be a valid and useful instrument. On the other hand, when using the institutional instruments, the weak correlation between the instruments and years of schooling produces imprecise and likely biased estimates of the return to schooling.

Explaining Game-to-Game Ticket Sales for Major League Baseball Games Over Time

Using data from more than 10,000 games from 1985 through 2009, the authors estimate the effect various factors have on attendance at Major League Baseball (MLB) games. As previously found in the literature, interleague and interleague rivalry contests are associated with higher attendances, but this relationship has been weakening over time. Contrary to some of the literature, the authors find that the likelihood the home team will win the contest is inconsistently estimated over time, lending little support for the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis. Generally the effect on ticket sales from many potential factors has generally been weakening over time.

Student Assessments, Non‐test‐takers, and School Accountability

Abstract Much attention has focused recently on using student test scores to evaluate public schools. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 requires states to test students and evaluate each schools progress toward having all students meet or exceed state standards. Under the law, however, schools only need to test 95% of their students. When some students do not take the test, variability arises in a schools evaluation as the score of each student who did not take the test remains unknown. Using a statewide assessment administered to 11th graders in Illinois, we investigate this source of variation. In our data, 8% of students do not take the test. By applying a bounding technique to the unknown scores of the non‐test‐takers, we show that classifying schools as failing or passing against some fixed threshold frequently can be misleading. We also provide evidence that some schools may be strategically selecting some students to not take the test and, by so doing, increasing the schools test scores.

When winning is the only thing: pure strategy Nash equilibria in a three-candidate spatial voting model

It is well known that there are no pure strategy Nash equilibria (PSNE) in the standard three-candidate spatial voting model when candidates maximize their share of the vote. When all that matters to the candidates is winning the election, however, we show that PSNE do exist. We provide a complete characterization of such equilibria and then extend our results to elections with an arbitrary number of candidates.

Extending Monopoly Power under Joint Production: A Case Study of the Red Cross and the Blood Centers of America

This article provides a case study on joint production technologies in the market for blood products. The discussion and analysis are motivated by a patent for a plasma-scrubbing technology, acquired solely by the Red Cross. This example of joint production is used to illustrate questions surrounding the leveraging of monopoly power. Specifically, could the Red Cross utilize its monopoly over one jointly produced good (scrubbed plasma) to extend market power to a non-monopolized good (red blood cells) when competing with the Blood Centers of America? The case considers the potential for a dual monopoly (by the Red Cross in both markets), limit pricing on the part of the Red Cross in the market for red blood cells, and a shared market in which the Red Cross is a monopoly in the market for plasma but competes with the Blood Centers of America in the market for red blood cells.

Freedom and Transparency: Democracies, Non-Democracies, and Conventional Arms Transfers

With freedom and transparency data for more than 150 countries, we find that almost 70 percent of countries with a high degree of internal freedom are also transparent when it comes to reporting data on arms transfers. Comparatively, only 21 percent of countries that protect few individual freedoms report such data. Though robust, our findings are little comfort to scholars who theorize a causal link between democracy and transparency, and attribute international peace and security to this relationship. Our findings also question transparencys status as an international norm and validate standard structural realisms thinking about the limits of security cooperation.