IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v61y2023i4p1077-1102.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Anticipating the honeymoon: Event study estimation of new stadium effects in Major League Baseball using the imputation method

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Szymanski

Abstract

This paper estimates the impact of new stadiums on attendance and revenues of Major League Baseball teams between 1970 and 2019. Recent studies reveal that two‐way fixed effects (TWFE) models may produce biased estimates, proposing an “imputation” method instead. This paper uses the imputation method to generate a counterfactual estimate, based on untreated observations: the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) equals the difference between actual and counterfactual estimates. The analysis shows that there were significant anticipation effects associated with new stadiums, up to three seasons before opening. It suggests previous estimates may significantly understate new stadium revenue gains.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Szymanski, 2023. "Anticipating the honeymoon: Event study estimation of new stadium effects in Major League Baseball using the imputation method," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 1077-1102, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:61:y:2023:i:4:p:1077-1102
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.13149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13149
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecin.13149?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brad R. Humphreys, 2019. "Should The Construction Of New Professional Sports Facilities Be Subsidized?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(1), pages 264-270, January.
    2. Dennis Coates & Brad R. Humphreys, 2005. "Novelty Effects Of New Facilities On Attendance At Professional Sporting Events," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 23(3), pages 436-455, July.
    3. Clément de Chaisemartin & Xavier D'Haultfœuille, 2020. "Two-Way Fixed Effects Estimators with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2964-2996, September.
    4. Nola Agha, 2013. "The Economic Impact of Stadiums and Teams," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(3), pages 227-252, June.
    5. Victor Matheson, 2019. "Is There A Case For Subsidizing Sports Stadiums?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(1), pages 271-277, January.
    6. Kevin G. Quinn & Paul B. Bursik & Christopher P. Borick & Lisa Raethz, 2003. "Do New Digs Mean more Wins?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(3), pages 167-182, August.
    7. Seth R. Gitter & Thomas A. Rhoads, 2014. "Stadium Construction And Minor League Baseball Attendance," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 32(1), pages 144-154, January.
    8. Chad D. McEvoy & Mark S. Nagel & Timothy D. DeSchriver & Matthew T. Brown, 2005. "Facility Age and Attendance in Major League Baseball," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 19-41, January.
    9. Luis Garicano & Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Canice Prendergast, 2005. "Favoritism Under Social Pressure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 208-216, May.
    10. John C. Leadley & Zenon X. Zygmont, 2005. "When Is the Honeymoon Over? National Basketball Association Attendance 1971-2000," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 6(2), pages 203-221, May.
    11. Sun, Liyang & Abraham, Sarah, 2021. "Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 175-199.
    12. John Charles Bradbury, 2019. "Determinants Of Revenue In Sports Leagues: An Empirical Assessment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(1), pages 121-140, January.
    13. Baker, Andrew C. & Larcker, David F. & Wang, Charles C.Y., 2022. "How much should we trust staggered difference-in-differences estimates?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 370-395.
    14. Goodman-Bacon, Andrew, 2021. "Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 254-277.
    15. Callaway, Brantly & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C., 2021. "Difference-in-Differences with multiple time periods," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 200-230.
    16. Marc Poitras, 2006. "Do New Major League Ballparks Pay for Themselves?," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(5), pages 2275-2300, September.
    17. Christopher M. Clapp & Jahn K. Hakes, 2005. "How Long a Honeymoon? The Effect of New Stadiums on Attendance in Major League Baseball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 6(3), pages 237-263, August.
    18. Jonathan Roth, 2022. "Pretest with Caution: Event-Study Estimates after Testing for Parallel Trends," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 305-322, September.
    19. Imbens,Guido W. & Rubin,Donald B., 2015. "Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521885881, November.
    20. Brian P Soebbing & Daniel S Mason & Brad R Humphreys, 2016. "Novelty effects and sports facilities in smaller cities: Evidence from Canadian hockey arenas," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(8), pages 1674-1690, June.
    21. McEvoy, Chad D. & Nagel, Mark S. & DeSchriver, Timothy D. & Brown, Matthew T., 2005. "Facility Age and Attendance in Major League Baseball," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 19-41, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Charles Bradbury, 2024. "Revisiting the novelty effect from new stadiums: An event study approach," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(4), pages 1722-1747, October.
    2. Jan C. van Ours, 2024. "No Novelty Effect but a Honeymoon that Lasts On the Attendance Effects of New Football Stadiums," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 24-010/V, Tinbergen Institute.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John Charles Bradbury, 2024. "Revisiting the novelty effect from new stadiums: An event study approach," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(4), pages 1722-1747, October.
    2. Agha, Nola & Rascher, Daniel, 2013. "When can economic impact be positive? Nine conditions that explain why smaller sports can have bigger impacts," MPRA Paper 48016, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Rik Chakraborti & Gavin Roberts, 2023. "How price-gouging regulation undermined COVID-19 mitigation: county-level evidence of unintended consequences," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 196(1), pages 51-83, July.
    4. Mikhail Mamonov & Anna Pestova & Steven Ongena, 2023. "“Crime and Punishment”? How Banks Anticipate and Propagate Global Financial Sanctions," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp753, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    5. Mark Kattenberg & Bas Scheer & Jurre Thiel, 2023. "Causal forests with fixed effects for treatment effect heterogeneity in difference-in-differences," CPB Discussion Paper 452, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    6. Asatryan, Zareh & Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Birkholz, Carlo & Hufschmidt, Patrick, 2023. "Favoritism by the governing elite," Ruhr Economic Papers 1029, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    7. Chen, Jidong & Shi, Xinzheng & Zhang, Ming-ang & Zhang, Sihan, 2024. "Centralization of environmental administration and air pollution: Evidence from China," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    8. Cl'ement de Chaisemartin & Xavier D'Haultf{oe}uille, 2021. "Two-Way Fixed Effects and Differences-in-Differences with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects: A Survey," Papers 2112.04565, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2022.
    9. Marco Compagnoni & Marco Grazzi & Fabio Pieri & Chiara Tomasi, 2025. "Extended Producer Responsibility and Trade Flows in Waste: The Case of Batteries," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 88(1), pages 43-76, January.
    10. Davidson, Carl & Heyman, Fredrik & Matusz, Steven & Sjöholm, Fredrik & Chun Zhu, Susan, 2022. "How International Experience Helps Shape Labor Market Outcomes," Working Paper Series 1453, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 09 Jun 2024.
    11. Brian P Soebbing & Daniel S Mason & Brad R Humphreys, 2016. "Novelty effects and sports facilities in smaller cities: Evidence from Canadian hockey arenas," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(8), pages 1674-1690, June.
    12. Melnik, Walter & Smyth, Andrew, 2024. "R&D tax credits and innovation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    13. Luca Coraggio & Marco Pagano & Annalisa Scognamiglio & Joacim Tåg, 2022. "JAQ of All Trades: Job Mismatch, Firm Productivity and Managerial Quality," EIEF Working Papers Series 2205, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Mar 2022.
    14. John Charles Bradbury & Dennis Coates & Brad R. Humphreys, 2023. "The impact of professional sports franchises and venues on local economies: A comprehensive survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 1389-1431, September.
    15. Chabé-Ferret, Sylvain & Reynaud, Arnaud & Tène, Eva, 2021. "Water Quality, Policy Diffusion Effects and Farmers’ Behavior," TSE Working Papers 21-1229, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    16. Roth, Jonathan & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Bilinski, Alyssa & Poe, John, 2023. "What’s trending in difference-in-differences? A synthesis of the recent econometrics literature," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2218-2244.
    17. Mantovani, Andrea & Reggiani, Carlo & Broocks, Annette & Duch-Brown, Nestor & Ma, Peiyao, 2022. "The Price Effects of Banning Price Parity Clauses in the EU: Evidence from International Hotel Groups," TSE Working Papers 22-1371, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    18. Wei-Fong Pan, 2023. "Does a firm’s lobbying activity respond to its peers’ lobbying activity?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 194(3), pages 297-324, March.
    19. Pinotti, Paolo & Bhalotra, Sonia & Britto, Diogo & Sampaio, Breno, 2021. "Job Displacement, Unemployment Benefits and Domestic Violence," CEPR Discussion Papers 16350, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Lindgren, Erik & Pettersson-Lidbom, Per & Tyrefors, Björn, 2021. "The Causal Effect of Transport Infrastructure: Evidence from a New Historical Database," Working Paper Series 1407, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:61:y:2023:i:4:p:1077-1102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.