News reports yesterday say the FBI is investigating an NBA referee who allegedly bet on games that he was calling.
This is a perfect problem for an economist to answer with data, and the obvious man for the job is Justin Wolfers, who has written papers on NBA referees and on point shaving in basketball!
Message to Justin: Freakonomics blog readers expect to be the first to know when you’ve analyzed the data.
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November 20
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Ron Paul
When we solicited your questions for Congressman Ron Paul shortly after the election, so many questions came in that we split Paul’s answers into two batches, the first of which was published last week.
Here is the second. Like the first batch, they are well-considered and interesting throughout; they will surely make many [...]
November 20
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I often get emails from blog readers asking me to shed light on some issue that, in the mind of the email writer, is a pressing social or economic issue. Sometimes it is a big issue like immigration or the financial crisis. More often it is something less mainstream, like election fraud or an unusual [...]
November 20
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It’s not an entire film (and it’s not in French), but two more readers, Talya and Pavle, have sent in a video of their song “Fannie Mae Eat Freddie Mac and Cheese,” which uses “freakonomics” as a sort of mantra. We like.
November 19
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Photo: Jamesfischer
These are the economic times that try men’s souls, and women’s too. In the past few months, a lot of people have seen their net worth fall substantially, and I’m sure more than a few have contemplated what would happen if they lost everything.
So we asked a group of people — Nick Mills, [...]
November 19
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Blog reader Nick Turner sent along this photo of a Body Shop ad in San Francisco:
Photo: Nick Turner
He was surprised that the ad guarantees fair-labor conditions for workers in Italy:
I thought fair-trade protections were for third-world workers. I
wonder how the Italians feel about this designation.
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1. Go to Hulu.com. 2. Choose Arrested Development. 3. Start with Season 1 and then watch every episode of all three seasons. 4. You can thank me later. (SJD)
I can scarcely tell a scarlet tanager from Scarlett O’Hara, but The Life of the Skies had me transfixed from the first page. Jonathan Rosen -- who happens to be a friend of mine -- writes with astounding insight, wit, and compassion. The story he tells here is the best kind of odyssey, an outward journey that ends up highlighting the beauty and daring that live inside of us. Here's a Times review of the book, and here's an earlier blog post about the book and the power of suggestion. (SJD)
Even if you don’t have a son fighting in Iraq, even if you don’t read poetry, even if you think you are immune to the power of a mother’s lament – pick up The Warrior and read it right away. Fran Richey has written some of the most powerful stories I’ve ever encountered. It is obvious that her life was changed by living these poems; yours may well be changed by reading them. (SJD)
In his last walk of the series, the author manages to avoid stepping out into thin air.
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7 Comments
But note the last words, and only footnote, of the cited article: “While referees may also be corruptible, they are not vested in either the favorite or underdog winning and, thus, are unlikely to be the source of the systematic patterns previously identified.” A player can shave in only one direction, a referee in either. That makes the pattern-spotting analysis much more difficult. Perhaps not impossible, but difficult.
— Ken D.Ha nice, my friends and I were just saying this this morning. Wolfers is doing some of the most interesting work out there today in my opinion.
— F. ChakraWe’re is the data he uses? I think this would be a good (but challenging) exercise for student econometricians.
— 58saavedraI look forward to Justin Wolfers analysis and insights on this interesting issue. Inspired by his previous work, I have spent the past year collecting and analyzing NBA game data. Based on my analysis, the data suggest a persistent inefficiency in the NBA betting market, which can be explained by point shaving. This recent revelation regarding a referee is consistent with the data.
My analysis is presented in my recently completed senior economics thesis at Stanford University posted here: http://www.stanford.edu/~jmg52/
— jgibbsJonathan Gibbs wrote: “Particularly, the strategies of betting against all favorites of 10 or more points and betting against all favorites of 12.5 or more points reject a fair bet at the 5% significance level … Additionally, a major point, untouched in this examination, is that point shaving is consistently attributed to players, while coaches and referees are no less principal characters in basketball games and could be equally culpable. Further research could study substitution patterns and infractions called to test if, instead, coaches or referees are willfully affecting the final margins of games.”
http://www.stanford.edu/~jmg52/NBA%20Analysis/JGibbs%20NBA%20Analysis.pdf
— KentJonathan Gibbs wrote: “Particularly, the strategies of betting against all favorites of 10 or more points and betting against all favorites of 12.5 or more points reject a fair bet at the 5% significance level … Additionally, a major point, untouched in this examination, is that point shaving is consistently attributed to players, while coaches and referees are no less principal characters in basketball games and could be equally culpable. Further research could study substitution patterns and infractions called to test if, instead, coaches or referees are willfully affecting the final margins of games.”
— KentTo post #1. Everything I’ve read indicates that the any cheating would happen on over/under bets. The ref can fairly easily influence a game by calling more fouls and thus stopping the clock and letting points accrue at a greater rate via the free throw line.
— chappy8