Game Theory and Sports

Today’s first guest is Stanford Economics Professor Paul Oyer who has written the book An Economist Goes to the Game: How to Throw Away $580 million and Other Surprising Insights from the Economics of Sports. Paul will discuss which sports your kids should play. Why South Koreans dominate women’s golf? And how does game theory inform us whether Michael Jordan should take the last shot or pass the ball to another player?

Our second speaker will be University of Michigan economist Stefan Szymanski who is the author of Soccernomics. Our discussion will focus on the economics of all thing’s soccer including why European soccer owners lose money, and why do certain soccer positions take most of the earnings.