This picture is from the scene that opens the chapter.
This picture is from the scene that opens the chapter.
What is the return on investment for a talented kid growing up in Dakar focusing on soccer after factoring in the opportunity cost of less time spent studying and developing other skills?
What factors best explain the differences in a given country’s success in men’s and women’s sports? For example, how does the fact that American women are so good in soccer compared to American men relate, in economic terms, to the fact that Korean women are so much better than Korean men in golf?
Using records of how much PEDs affect sprinters, what are the odds that a random man could run a 100-meter race as fast as Usain Bolt did if he did everything as efficiently as possible but did not take PEDs? What are the odds that at least one man could do it over a 25-year period?
How much insurance value is created by Major League Baseball contracts? This can be measured by measuring how much upside players give up when signing long-term deals and how much less players who get injured or get worse would have earned if they had not signed long contracts. A great thesis will go on to estimate risk aversion coefficients (maybe across different sports).
Do professional tennis players and Olympic volleyball players use drop shots optimally?
Female soccer players on World Cup teams make much less than their male counterparts. Is this difference attributable to the tastes of those who run the teams, fans, or some other factor?
Using resale prices of tickets, determine how much individual superstars are worth by seeing how prices change when an injury keeps a player out of a game.
More and more cities now publicly finance minor league baseball stadium construction – write a thesis carefully analyzing the economic returns to these stadiums using nearby areas as comparison cities.
By comparing the predicted probabilities of teams winning MLB games from statistical analysis against the betting odds, determine what factors lead casinos to tilt the odds – home team, certain favorite teams, etc.?