Publications

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Joint with Martijn van den Assem and Dennie van Dolder 

R&R Management Science

 Berger and Pope (2011) show that being slightly behind increases the likelihood of winning in professional and collegiate basketball. We extend their analysis to large samples of Australian football, American football and rugby matches, but find little to no evidence of such an effect for these three sports. When we revisit the phenomenon for basketball, we do find supportive evidence for National Basketball Association (NBA) matches from the period analyzed in Berger and Pope. However, we find no significant effect for NBA matches from outside this sample period, for collegiate matches, and for matches from the Women’s NBA. High-powered meta-analyses across the different sports and competitions do not reject the null hypothesis of no effect of being slightly behind on winning. 

Joint with  Matthew Jordan, Nicholas Adolph and Shane Frederick

Pharmaceutical pricing in the United States varies, and patients often do not know the out-of-pocket costs of their medications until arriving at the pharmacy to retrieve their prescriptions. In recent years, these pharmacy-counter interactions have seen the introduction of copay cards: manufacturer-issued coupons that are sent directly to pharmacies, physicians, and patients to reduce patient out-of-pocket costs. We exploit a unique data set containing transactions from ∼85 percent of all US pharmacies to estimate the causal effect of copay card discounts on pick-up rates of life-saving medications. Holding actual final price constant, we find that the presence of copay cards increases pick-up rates, providing evidence that discounts shift the demand curve itself. 

Do mass mobilizations bring about social change? Prior research provides mixed findings on whether large-scale collective action helps protesters further their cause. This paper adds new evidence to this debate by investigating the causal impact of racial injustice protests on the 2020 presidential election. Following the death of G. P. Floyd Jr. on 25 May 2020, a series of Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the US. Using cross-county variation in rainfall as an exogenous source of variation in protests, we document a marked shift in support for the Democratic candidate in counties that experienced more protesting activity. As a consequence, BLM protests might have tilted the election in favor of the democratic party. We additionally document that BLM protests did not affect the overall turnout rate, which suggests that the increase in Democratic support primarily resulted from a progressive shift among undecided voters.