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Unbiased Estimation of Competitive Balance in Sports Leagues with Unbalanced Schedules

Author

Listed:
  • Young Hoon Lee

    (Department of Economics, Sogang University, Seoul)

  • Yongdai Kim

    (Department of Statistics, Seoul National University)

  • Sara Kim

    (Department of Statistics, Seoul National University)

Abstract

Many empirical studies on competitive balance (CB) use the ratio of the actual standard deviation to the idealized standard deviation of win percentages (RSD). This paper suggests that empirical studies that use RSD to compare CB among different leagues are invalid, but that RSD may be used for time-series analysis on CB in a league if there are no changes in season length. When schedules are unbalanced and/or include interleague games, the final winning percentage is a biased estimator of the true win probability. This paper takes a mathematical statistical approach to derive an unbiased estimator of within-season CB that can be applied to not only balanced but also unbalanced schedules. Simulations and empirical applications are also presented.

Suggested Citation

  • Young Hoon Lee & Yongdai Kim & Sara Kim, 2018. "Unbiased Estimation of Competitive Balance in Sports Leagues with Unbalanced Schedules," Working Papers 1801, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).
    • Handle: RePEc:sgo:wpaper:1801
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Keywords

    Competitive Balance; Unbalanced Schedule; Unbiased Estimation;
    All these keywords.

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