Student-Faculty Research
The Colorado College's Economics Department also offers students opportunities to work alongside their professors. There are a number of papers under review. Some abstacts are listed below:
SELLING IDEAS: THE DETERMINANTS OF PATENT VALUE IN AN AUCTION ENVIRONMENT
STRADDLE OPTION PROFITABILITY IN CORPORATE LAWSUITS
ARE MANY HEADS BETTER THAN TWO? RECENT CHANGES IN INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGICAL COLLABORATION
THE DEMAND FOR NFL ATTENDANCE: A RATIONAL ADDICTION MODEL
This paper examines the demand for attendance at National Football League (NFL) games using a rational addiction model to test the hypothesis that professional football displays the properties of a habit-forming good. Rational addiction theory suggests that past and future consumption play a part in determining the current period’s consumption for habit-forming goods. A pooled data set is collected using statistics from each NFL team from the 1983 to the 2002 seasons. Current attendance is modeled as a function of team specific variables including past and future attendance, ticket price, and team performance as well as league variables such as the incidence of strikes. The model is estimated using Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS). It is found that past and future attendance, winning percentage, the age of the stadium in which a team plays, and the occurrence of strikes are significant factors in the determination of attendance at NFL games. The fact that coefficients for past and future attendance are positive and significant in this analysis lends support to the notion that NFL fans display characteristics of rational addiction in their consumption behavior.
NEW EQUITY PERFORMANCE FOLLOWING CHAPTER 11 EMERGENCE
One of the deciding factors in a company’s success is its financial condition. The fiscal stability of a firm and its ability to maintain profitability are crucial to sustaining a competitive advantage within an industry and constitute ongoing concerns for management and private and public investors. This study examined the performance of exchange-traded common equity from firms in Chapter 11 bankruptcy emergence compared to the common stock of non-bankrupt market competitors and recently public peers in a short and long-term outlook, using the capital asset pricing model as a the primary tool for valuation and analysis. --- Nicholas K. Wold '07 & Professor Judy Laux
THE DETERMINANTS OF COMPETITIVE BALANCE IN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
This paper examines the competitive balance of the NFL using Gini coefficients and the deviations of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. We present upper bounds for both the above measures that are constructed using actual playing schedules. We model competitive balance as a function of player talent, the incidence of strikes, expansion of the NFL, the introduction of free agency and the salary cap in the NFL using data from the 1970 to 2002 seasons. We find that free agency and salary cap restrictions tend to promote competitive balance while concentration of player talent reduces competitiveness among teams. Strikes by players and expansion of the NFL to include new teams also affect competitive balance significantly.