Many markets have “unraveled” and experienced transactions at dispersed and apparently inefficiently early times. Often these markets develop institutions to coordinate and delay the timing of transactions. However it has proved difficult to gather data that allows the efficiency gains to be identified and measured. The present paper considers a market for which such data can be gathered. Prior to 1992, college football teams were matched for post-season play, in “bowl” games, up to several weeks before the end of the regular football season. Since 1992, the market has undergone a series of reorganizations that postpone this matching until the end of the regular season. We show that this has promoted more efficient matching of teams, as measured by the resulting television viewership. The chief driver has been the increased ability of later matching to produce “championship” games.
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Microeconomics with number
0404001.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Hao Li & Wing Suen, 2004.
"Self-Fulfilling Early-Contracting Rush,"
International Economic Review,
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 45(1), pages 301-324, 02.
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