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Dan Hamermesh on Baseball and Economic Downturns

From the Freakonomics blog:

In bad times, when the opportunity cost of time is reduced, the total price of an afternoon at the ballpark is lower for many people than it is when jobs are more plentiful. I see this in my own planning. Though I like baseball, I haven’t been to an M.L.B. game in over five years — I’ve been working too hard; but I do plan to attend more once I partially retire and the opportunity cost of my time drops.

Baseball watching is a time-intensive activity; and when time becomes “cheaper” for many people, as it does in a recession, it’s not surprising that the demand for watching M.L.B. games rises. The price of the complementary good to the ticket price — the price of one’s time — has fallen.

If so, then baseball is an inferior good.  But in some of my own research (with colleagues Ken Park and Soonhwan Lee), baseball is a normal good.  Here is another bit of research that shows normality.  Here's Skip's previous post at TSE on the subject.

Gene Doping - The New Frontier of Doping

Cross-posted at TSE

This morning's Kansas City Star has an interesting piece on the new frontier of doping:  gene doping.  The whole article is worth a read, but here are the opening paragraphs.

Scientists have seen the future of sport. It involves mice that can lift three times the average, humans who can run 90-minute marathons, and ligament tears that can be fixed by injection.

It is genetic engineering, therapy and doping, and it is the arrival of the bionic athlete. At the extreme, this is either the advancement or end of the human race. At the minimum, it is the unavoidable change to the way our sports — baseball, football, the Olympics, you name it — are played.

One thing that the article mentions is that the genetic doping is a way for the human body to exceed its natural athletic capacity.

If confined to natural training, elite athletes are said to be now using 99 percent of their natural physical capacity, compared to just 75 percent in 1896, the year of the first modern Olympics. Given those parameters, academics say there would be no new world records after the year 2060.

But that’s in a world with no genetic engineering. Scientists think a series of gene-doping breakthroughs could boost endurance by up to 10 percent and, according to one study, allow a runner to complete a marathon in 90 minutes — more than a half-hour faster than the current world record.

In an absolute sense, doping should generate more interest from fans as athletes get bigger, stronger, and faster.  But I wonder if there is diminishing marginal utility on the point of view of fans.  "Wow, Brady Jones has hit his 500th home run that traveled more than 600 feet.  Big deal!"  Does the display of athletic talent get so extreme that fans are no longer all that excited (all else equal)?

Another interesting issue is what happens to the supply of athletic talent in team sports.  Assuming a safe type of genetic doping is found that increases the human capacity to run, jump, etc., this should increase the supply of talent, leading to lower salaries "per unit of talent."  And what of competitive balance?  If the number of teams stays more or less constant, competition should become almost perfectly balanced, non?

The Benefits of Being a Full Professor

Daniel Drezner via MR:

10)  You get to pig out.  More attractive professors tend to do better in student evaluations and other metrics to rate professors. This is not surprising -- after all, the attractive receive a similar dividend across professions.

There's no rank beyond full professor, however. So, that's it for me. My fight against my expanding waistline was rapidly turning into a quagmire anyway. From now on, it's not going to be an either/or choice with me -- I'm going to both Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks whenever I see one on the road!!

Dude, that's how you become a full professor!

And the number one reason:

1)  When the moon is full, I get to kill a student.

That's harsh.  Were my father still alive, he'd replace "student" with "administrator" ;-)

Black Markets in Everything: Human Growth Hormone

As Adam Smith taught us, markets "direct" stuff to their most-valued use.  But when government allows one group of consumers legal status to obtain a product but makes the same product off-limits to another group of consumers, black markets are almost inevitable when the second group has a higher willingness to pay. 

Last year, when federal and county investigators raided the Bay Area home of Greg Anderson, best known as Barry Bonds' personal trainer, they found syringes, anabolic steroids and vials of Serostim. In 1996, Serostim became the first synthetic human growth hormone approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of "wasting," the involuntary loss of lean body mass among HIV and AIDS patients.

Anderson allegedly told investigators on the day of the raid that he received testosterone and human growth hormone from "AIDS patients in San Francisco who have prescriptions for them." He explained that he was "hooked up" with the drugs from random suppliers.

The statements are contained in a report written and signed by agents for the Internal Revenue Service and San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force shortly after the Sept. 3, 2003 raid on Anderson's house. Anna Ling, one of Anderson's attorneys, claims the memo contains fabrications by investigators, but declined to address whether Anderson has acquired drugs from the AIDS community.

I apologize for linking to a 3.5 year-old article on a 4-year old issue, but the steroid issue is still going strong and this is an interesting example of how private markets spontaneously develop.

Spicy Brown Sauce for Stir Fry

This is another sauce that goes well with all beef and chicken stir fry recipes I've tried.

1. 1/2 c soy sauce
2. 1 1/2 c water
3. 1/8 t white pepper
4. 1/4 t ginger powder
5. 1/4 t onion powder
6. 1/2 t sugar
7. 2 T ground fresh chili paste

Brown Sauce for Stir Fry

This blog has become a nice repository for my recipes.  Here's one that is very good with all kinds of stir fry.

1. 1/2 c soy sauce
2. 1 1/2 c water
3. 1/8 t white pepper
4. 1/2 t ginger powder
5. 1/2 t onion powder
6. 3 T corn starch

I've used this sauce for all kinds of beef w/ veggies and chicken w/ veggies recipes.

Addendum: I should have added directions to my recipe, just in case.  I mix all the ingredients together while my meat and veggies are cooking in the wok.  After I've stir fried my meat and veggies, I push them to the side, add the sauce, and wait until the sauce thickens (a couple of minutes or so under medium heat).  I then mix the meat, veggies, and sauce together, turn the heat to low, cover, and simmer for about 5 minutes.

Note that a good marinade is this brown sauce plus about 2 tablespoons of peanut or sesame oil.  I marinate the meat (chicken or beef) overnight.  Besides adding flavor, the marinade makes the meat more tender.

The NFL vs. the CFL: the NFL has Higher Absolute Quality

Yesterday I wrote a post on the NFL's Buffalo Bills playing in Toronto over the next few seasons.  Responding to an earlier post by Skip, I wrote:

It's anecdotal, I realize, but there seems to be high demand for NFL football in Toronto.  That may simply be due to the novelty of NFL football being played in Toronto.  Or perhaps it's due to the value of the NFL brand name, a value the CFL may not have in it's country.

Victor Matheson of Holy Cross made the following comment over at TSE:

The NFL is a better product and, therefore, has higher demand.

The best players end up on NFL rosters.  Those further down the talent ladder end up in the CFL and the Arnea Football League.  Because, all else equal, fans want to see the best players on the field, the demand for NFL football and all that goes along with it will exceed that of the CFL.

This Too Shall Pass

Ah, the joys of having young children:

I completed this all in two hours, had my Chevy Equinox full of four lawn chairs, two tables, a dutch oven, 10-12 medium sized rocks that my dad had brought back from Arkansas, the mail, and groceries from WalMart. I unloaded my groceries and got them all put away, when my phone suddenly rang. I noticed it was a local number meaning either one of my new friends in Fort Calhoun, or school. It was school. The school nurse to be precise. She was calling me to tell me that my daughter had decided to put a bead up her nose, and was rather upset because it was now stuck. What happened to my perfectly functional day that was flowing so smoothly even with all the things I had to do? A seven year old is what happened. My very pretty, sweet, lovely second child who tries to defy the logic of mother on a regular basis.

I have, thankfully, no foreign-object-in-the-body stories to tell.  I spent an hour looking for a toy jet today, a toy that had been stashed away in one of the many toy bins in our house.  My 7 year old found it and played with it in the yard over the weekend.  On Monday, I ran over it when mowing, but luckily it did not get swooped up into the blades.  A toy, played with and quickly forgotten. 

Today, however, it was the most cherished possession, and we couldn't find it.  So I made good on my promise to my eldest that I'd look for the plane.  No luck. Perhaps I should check the lawn again.

The NFL in Toronto

When readings Skip's post on the CFL this afternoon, I noticed this article listed as being one of the most popular over at the Toronto Globe and Mail.  It describes the pricing of tickets to Buffalo Bills games being played in Toronto in the next few years:

Tickets for the Buffalo Bills' eight-game series in Toronto will average $183 per seat — more than triple the cost for the team's home games at Ralph Wilson Stadium this season.

The ticket prices, ranging from $55 to $295, were released Wednesday by the Toronto-based group hosting the series, which will have the Bills play five annual regular-season and three preseason games at the 54,000-seat Rogers Centre through 2012.

The prices are in Canadian money, which is currently near par with the U.S. dollar, and do not include a large bulk of VIP sideline and hospitality suite seats, which will raise the average even higher.

Despite the hefty price, organizers anticipate the games selling out after 180,000 ticket requests were registered on a Web site last month. About 30,000 tickets per game will be distributed in two weeks by lottery to Internet registrants as well as a limited number of Bills and CFL Toronto Argonauts season-ticket holders.

Compare those prices to the prices of Toronto Argonauts games.  Single game tickets are not for sale yet for the 2008 season, but choice seats in their 3-game package go for $189 total and season tickets range from $300-$700 for a 9 game home season plus a few other other goodies.

Which brings me to one of Skip's thoughts about why government subsidies have been hard to come by for CFL teams:

It is possible that the CFL makes so little money and has such a small impact that the relocation threat is not operative. There is in fact relatively little demand for football stadiums, public or privately financed.

It's anecdotal, I realize, but there seems to be high demand for NFL football in Toronto.  That may simply be due to the novelty of NFL football being played in Toronto.  Or perhaps it's due to the value of the NFL brand name, a value the CFL may not have in it's country.

Cross posted at TSE

Tigers Beat Creighton

Although Missouri has struggled since winning 14 in a row earlier this season, going 12-14 since that run coming into yesterday's game, the Tigers pinned a loss on the Creighton Blue Jays last night.  Pinch hitter Steve Gray hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth to win the game.  Guess who Gray hit the homer off of.  Yes, he hit it off of Pat Venditte, the ambidextrous pitcher who stung my hand over 15 years ago, and the only Blue Jay I wanted to see have success off of the Tigers.

Venditte inherited a 4-1 lead when he came in to start the eighth inning. He gave up a two-out, two-run homer to Trevor Coleman that pulled the Tigers within 4-3, but closed the eighth with his third strikeout of the inning. Dan Pietroburgo opened the Missouri ninth by reaching first base on third baseman Steve Winkelmann's throwing error, and pinch-runner Kurt Calvert took second on a sacrifice.

...Venditte fell behind the left-handed-hitting Gray three balls and one strike before delivering the fateful pitch.

"I got behind in the count and had to throw a strike, and he got good metal on it," Venditte said. "I'm not doing my job right now. My team counts on me to close down ballgames, and I'm not doing that. Something's got to change."

It marked Venditte's second rough outing. He inherited a 7-1 lead in the second game of a Saturday doubleheader at Southern Illinois and surrendered two homers, the first a grand slam in the eighth and the second a two-out blast that tied the game. Creighton went on to win 9-8 in 10 innings.

Not that I'm disappointed overall.  Mizzou needed this win, badly.  But I feel for Venditte.

Wheat Beer

This is a wheat beer adapted from the Turtle's Wheat Beer in Papazian's The Homebrewer's Companion.  I made a yeast starter out of 4 oz of wheat DME and 8 oz of Culligan drinking water.  I made the starter 2 days before I began brewing the batch.

1. 6# wheat LME
2. 1 oz Vanguard leaf hops alpha = 4.6% - boiling (60")
3. 1/2 oz Willamette leaf hops alpha = 4.3% - flavor (30")
4. 1/2 oz Willamette leaf hops alpha = 4.3% - aroma (5")
5. 1 oz Cascade leaf hops alpha = 6.9% - aroma (2")
6. 1t Irish moss
7. 3/4 corn sugar priming
8. Culligan drinking water

I brought 3 gallons of water to a near boil and mixed in the LME.  I brought the mixture to a boil and added the boiling hops.  I boiled the wort for 30" and then added the flavor hops.  I boiled the wort for another 15 minutes and then added the Irish moss and my wort chiller to the wort (to sanitize the chiller).  I boiled the wort for another 10 minutes and then added the Willamette aroma hops.  I boiled the wort for another 3 minutes and added the Cascade hops.  I boiled for two more minutes, removed the pot from the burner and the hops from the wort, and began running cold tap water through my wort chiller.  I brought the wort to 75 degrees, added approximately 3 gallons of drinking water and the chilled wort to the carboy to make 5 gallons.  I pitched the yeast and began clean-up.

OG:  1.046

By 6:30 the following morning, approximately 8 hours after pitching the yeast, a nice krauesen had formed in the carboy and air bubbles were happily flowing through the airlock.

Update 5-07-2008:  Krauesen overboard.  The foamy krauesen hath boiled over, and made quite a mess.  The fermentation was going fine.  The bubbles in the airlock had decreased in number but had increased in intensity.  I thought things were slowing down after a nice fermentation.  But upon returning home from work today, I found the krauesen had blown through the airlock and the rubber stopper.

What Am I Suppose to Think?

I'm finishing up a final exam in my Micro Principles class.  A student walks up, turns in his exam, shakes my hand, and places a small brochure on the table.  The brochure reads "Are you good enough to go to Heaven?"

Um, OK  Was the exam that tough?

You Can't Keep a Good Man Down

So, King had gall bladder surgery yesterday and he wrote his first blog post since the internal invasion.

Many thanks to all of you. I just took the most tiring, most exciting 10-minute, 150 foot walk ever taken by this human being and found I had a wire for my laptop here. I am shocked beyond words at the outpouring of friendship shown me the last few days by you all on the comments, in other posts and people who've come by the hospital so far. I'm a little too weak to do lots of blogging, so this is all for today most likely. I'll tell you the rest of the story sometime. But when I tell people that virtual friends can be just as vital as those in real time, your comments, thoughts and prayers will be Exhibit A for the prosecution. God blesses me with your friendship.

Yeah, but he's cursed you with blogging fever!  But I'm damn glad that you're doing better.  Now get some rest, dadgummit! :-)

Dennis Coates on Stadiums

Dennis Coates has written an outstanding opinion piece in the American on public subsidization of sports.  He nicely frames the subject and presents evidence on pro sports' impact on local economies, including the external effects of sports.  The whole piece is worth a read, but I'll post the concluding paragraph to whet your appetite.

Of course, even if the benefits of stadiums and arenas cover the subsidies, the subsidies still may not be sound policy. First, there may be enormous variation in the distribution of the consumption and public-good benefits. It is clear that not all citizens in a community benefit equally from the presence of professional sports franchises in their city. Indeed, because the tax revenues used for the subsidies are often generated from lotteries and sales taxes whose burden falls disproportionately on the poor, while the consumption benefits go mostly to relatively wealthy sports fans, the net benefits are distributed regressively. Second, we should consider the net benefits to the community of alternative uses of the funds spent subsidizing sports facilities. Good policy means using the money where the net benefit is greatest, not simply where the net benefit is positive. That’s something state and local governments should keep in mind before pledging millions of dollars to fund the next new stadium project. And it’s something Congress should remember when evaluating the future of U.S. tax policy.

HT to Tom Kirkendall

Get Well, King

King Banaian is in the hospital.

King is in the hospital at this time and won't be blogging for a while. We'd talked Saturday morning - he'd landed in the hospital then with some stomach problems. He's on a restricted diet so stomach issues cannot be ignored. He was feeling better and they could find no source of the problem. He came to the Twin Cities to do his afternoon radio show, drove back to St. Cloud only to return to the hospital on Saturday night.

Tests run today indicate his problem is his gall bladder. He'll wait for surgery because he is now running a fever and having heart palpitations. His St. Cloud blogging buddy, Gary Gross, has information here.

As of now, surgery is scheduled for Tuesday morning. King has received pain meds. I will keep readers posted. In the meantime, any thoughts and prayers for King and his family are welcome. Any comments you post will be forwarded to King's family. Thank you.

That's from his co-blogger, Janet.  Get well, King.  Your fellow MnSCU economist and friend, along with his family, send you and the rest of the Banaian crew the best.

Update: Gary notes King had surgery on his gall bladder this morning and is recuperating.  That's good news - not that he had to get sliced, but that he's recuperating.

Collected Advice for Economists, Young and Not-so-Young

There is advice for teaching Principles courses and for writing letters of recommendation that you may prefer not to write, but that you must.  Via the Door.

Allan Sanderson: Consider the Options

Cross posted at TSE

Allan Sanderson tells his readers that TANSTAAFO (Olympics, not lunch).

Whether to support the Games themselves or merely the city's official bid, the latter carrying a price tag of $50 million to $100 million, one hears that "only private money" is underwriting those activities; no tax dollars will be spent. "Private" implicitly refers to donations from corporations and wealthy citizens. However, in jargon that students learn on the first day of Economics 101, virtually all expenditures or allocations have an opportunity cost, whether it be for a firm or family.

If Boeing, Sears, Motorola or McDonald's gives $1 million to help finance our Olympic bid, that is $1 million that does not get returned to stockholders as dividends or plowed back into the company for new projects and production. In addition, that is $1 million that does not, then, support an exhibition at the Field Museum, a new gallery at the Art Institute, or an after-school youth program.

When I sit down each December to write out checks to local, national and international charities and other non-profit organizations, I am implicitly choosing how to allocate, say, $2,000 among various groups and activities. The slice that goes to WTTW Ch. 11 doesn't go to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless or the American Cancer Society—or to the University of Chicago. It's still just $1 million or $2,000 no matter how a corporation, a wealthy benefactor or I cut it.

There is no free lunch in this world and no free Olympic Games either.

Via Stephen Karlson.