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Clay Collins

@claycollins.bsky.social
372 followers 587 following 73 posts

Assistant Professor of Sport Management, University of Georgia. WVU, Charlotte, and Berry Econ alum. Community College grad.

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Reposted by Clay Collins
Jared Rubin @jaredcrubin.com · 19/12/2023
**NEW WORKING PAPER** Enlightenment Ideals and Belief in Progress in the Run-up to the Industrial Revolution: A Textual Analysis w/ Ali Almelhem, Murat Iyigun & Austin Kennedy Available at: docs.iza.org/dp16674.pdf Short 🧵 below… 1/7
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Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · 30/09/2026
Our "A Few Goodmen" paper now has some serious competition, coming from the many Katherines of the world. arxiv.org/pdf/2404.00732
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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 01/10/2026
My quick search indicates that taxpayers paid $26 million to build this stadium, which now lacks a tenant.
wbtv.com
Gastonia Ghost Peppers baseball team folds after 2 seasons
Zawyer Sports & Entertainment did not say why they were ceasing operation of the Ghost Peppers
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Brad "Pencil Necked Geek" Humphreys @bradhumphreys.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Really interesting story about WVU economics PhD student (and my advisee) Matt Mullis and the gambling research he is doing as part of his dissertation stories.wvu.edu/high-roller
stories.wvu.edu
HIGH ROLLER - WVU Stories
A West Virginia University doctoral student uses statewide gambling data to research trends in igaming.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
May the people who do not alphabetize their BibTex file wake up exactly two minutes before their alarm every day.
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Journal of Policy Analysis and Management @jpam-dc.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Recently published in JPAM: "Jumping the Gun: The Effects of Permitless Concealed Carry Laws on Crime" by Susan Parker. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Jumping the Gun: The Effects of Permitless Concealed Carry Laws on Crime
In the last decade, one of the most substantial changes to firearm policy is the widespread adoption of permitless concealed carry laws. Since 2015, more than 20 states have adopted a permitless carr...
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The Quarterly Journal of Economics @qjeharvard.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Recently accepted by #QJE: “What Jobs Come to Mind? Stereotypes About Fields of Study,” by Conlon and Patel: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
doi.org
What Jobs Come to Mind? Stereotypes About Fields of Study*
Abstract. We test for stereotyping—the exaggeration of representative traits—in a high-stakes economic environment. Using both surveys administered among u
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The Quarterly Journal of Economics @qjeharvard.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
#QJE Aug 2026, #6, “"Compensate the Losers?" Economic Policy and the Origins of U.S. Partisan Realignment,” by Kuziemko, Longuet-Marx (@nicolaslonguetmarx), and Naidu: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
doi.org
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The Quarterly Journal of Economics @qjeharvard.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Recently accepted by #QJE: “The Employment Effects of a Guaranteed Income: Experimental Evidence from Two U.S. States,” by Vivalt, Rhodes, Bartik, Broockman, Krause, and Miller: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
doi.org
The Employment Effects of a Guaranteed Income: Experimental Evidence from Two U.S. States*
Abstract. We study the causal impacts of income on a rich array of employment outcomes, leveraging an experiment in which 1,000 low-income individuals were
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The Onion @theonion.com · 20/08/2026
Scalpers Jack Up Price Of Colorado Rockies Ticket To $11 theonion.com/scalpers-jack-up-price…
Scalpers Jack Up Price Of Colorado Rockies Ticket To $11
Fans Ask How Ball Club Still Has Heart To Charge Admission At All
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Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) @restatjournal.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Unprecedented return migration from the US has contributed to Mexico's economic development in recent decades. In the March issue, by José R. Bucheli and Matías Fontenla zurl.co/h2IZ1
direct.mit.edu
The Impact of Return Migration on Economic Development
Abstract. Mexican migration to the United States—one of the largest flows in human history—inverted in the late 2000s, and during the next decade more Mexicans returned home than those who migrated north. We exploit this historical reversal to estimate the effects of return migration on economic development in Mexico. We find that return migration leads to higher levels of development through improved income, labor, health, and educational outcomes. Our findings suggest that the benefits of migration extend beyond individuals’ tenure abroad, as accumulated capital, skills, and social norms have the potential to contribute to development back home.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Good news for sports econ people looking for travel funds. NAASE is now offering travel grants for first time presenters at NAASE-organized sessions at the Southerns, Easterns, and Westerns.
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Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) @restatjournal.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Legalized sports betting increases the impact of unexpected losses on intimate partner violence. Just Accepted new paper by Emily Arnesen and Kyutaro Matsuzawa zurl.co/9fiG7
zurl.co
Sports Betting Legalization Amplifies Emotional Cues and Intimate Partner Violence
Abstract. This study explores the relationship between legalized sports gambling, unexpected emotional cues stemming from NFL home team upset losses and
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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 09/07/2026
Gosh, if only someone had warned this might happen. Again, it's time to stop taking these economic impact "projections" seriously.
ajc.com
World Cup promises aren’t materializing for some Atlanta small businesses
A group of 30 vendors is trying to recoup thousands of dollars they claim they lost with a city-sponsored small-business activation downtown, the Welcome to ATL Experience.
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naasecon.bsky.social @naasecon.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
We also thank Brian Soebbing of the University of Alberta for serving as an at-large executive committee member for the past four years and Frank Stephenson of Berry College for serving as president 2024-26.
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naasecon.bsky.social @naasecon.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Congratulations to JC Bradbury of Kennesaw State on being elected as president-elect of NAASE and to Jeremy Losak of Syracuse University on being elected as an at-large executive committee member. And congratulations of Eva Leeds of Moravian College as she moves from president-elect to president.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Just got a notification from a college that my application for their Assistant Professor position was rejected. I applied in September 2022.
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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 24/06/2026
Important point: Handing out special tax breaks (not having to put $1 in the treasury) is equivalent to paying out a direct subsidy (take $1 from the treasury), and should be accounted for as such, even though they are more complicated to understand. Don't reward obfuscation.
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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Thank emergency substitute PBP announcer John Mozena of @accountableecon.bsky.social for stepping in in my absence!
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
There’s a lot of good things to like about the UMBC Sports Econ conference, but I think this is my favorite. All conferences should have a play-by-play like this.
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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Researchers found a short-term spike in hotel revenues immediately after Leo Messi’s arrival in MLS, but no evidence of any long-term structural growth in hotel stays, which should inform decisions on justifying dedicating hotel taxes to stadium projects.
fieldofschemes.com
Liveblog: What economists are telling us this year about sports stadiums
I unfortunately had to cancel my trip to this year's sports economics conference at University of Maryland-Baltimore County starting today, but friend of Field of Schemes John Mozena of the Center for...
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NEP-SPO: Sports and Economics @repec-nep-spo.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Language segmentation of the online sports labor market: The case of chess coaches: Mikhail Usanin
d.repec.org
NEP/RePEc link
to paper
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Manasvini Singh @vinisingh.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
New WP, just in time for #ASHEcon26! What started off as a project to learn LLM use for text analysis turned accidentally into a paper about stigma. [1/n]
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Lilly Springer @springerecon.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
In our newly published paper "Occupation Hazard? An Analysis of Birth Outcomes Among Physician Mothers" @davidslusky.bsky.social , Anupam Jena, and I investigate how a strenuous job affects health by studying the birth outcomes of physicians and lawyers. authors.elsevier.com/a/1nDXBAlwA2...
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Big thanks to everyone who helped get this paper published. Brian Soebbing, Jane Ruseski, Brad Humphreys, Frank Stephenson, Bryan McCannon, Josh Martin, Dennis Coates, and two anonymous referees.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Perhaps we need to think of hosting large sporting events as political gambles as well as economic ones. And in a political sense- they may pay off. See the full paper here: journals.sagepub.com/share/CH3HMR...
journals.sagepub.com
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
And there's a dark side too. I unfortunately don’t have enough treatments to break out into things like type of government, but many treatments in my sample are countries with authoritarian regimes.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I also try a few other specifications and robustness checks to tease this out further. It's not perfect, but there appears to be something here, and I think there are some new avenues to explore further.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
The MM results…. aren’t as nice. But since we have more data, we can try a better matching framework (CEM). In this approach, we also see a decline in protests for countries that host a Grand Prix.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I first use a propensity score matching design, and we find with the SPEED sample that instability events decrease when a country hosts a Grand Prix. SPEED also tries to type incidents by cause, and the decline seems driven by antigovernment and political protests.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
A quick note. "civil unrest" is not something with a standard definition. These two datasets are recording different events and cover different countries and different time periods. For those reasons, there’s no attempt to consolidate these together.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Examining 12 treated countries in the SPEED sample (1990-2005) and 16 in the Mass Mobilization sample (1990-2019), I use a matching framework to test whether hosting a Grand Prix is associated with changes to civil unrest.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I use Formula One Grands Prix as my sporting event of interest, as they often are financed by the state and often can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to host, but unlike, say the World Cup, they occur much more often and the hosts change frequently.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I find two datasets of civil unrest, the Social, Political and Economic Event Database Project (SPEED) and the Mass Mobilization Protest Data. These track civil unrest, from small protests to civil wars. I aggregate how many events occur in a given year for over 120+ countries & 15+ years.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Leaders may lobby for sporting events as a way to consolidate political power and enforce stability. It may also entertain the populace and reduce the likelihood of unrest (bread and circuses). But does it work? TLDR: it might
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Most economists are well aware of the economic non-benefits of hosting major sporting events, but leaders may choose to host major sporting events for non-economic reasons. I test the possibility of political benefits of hosting sporting events.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
New publication alert! My paper “Buying Loyalty at the Track? Formula One Grands Prix and Civil Unrest” has just been published in the International Journal of Sport Finance.
This article provides an empirical investigation of potential noneconomic consequences of hosting a major sporting event. Using two datasets of civil unrest events, I test if hosting a Formula One Grand Prix is associated with changes in social and political unrest days. Using propensity score matching, coarsened exact matching, and GMM estimation, results provide limited evidence that hosting a Formula One Grand Prix is associated with fewer days of unrest, suggesting that hosts may see political benefits from hosting major sporting events. However, there is some heterogeneity depending on the dataset used. This article contributes to the discussion examining political benefits and costs of hosting large sporting events, which may need to be taken into account along with the financial benefits and costs.
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Metter, Georgia. Spooky place
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Travis Roach @troach.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Now that our paper has been accepted, a quick thread for #EconSky on what happens when governments remove their taxes on gasoline to curry political favor. A timely paper⛽😤 First, it seems rather obvious why you would want to bring down prices when they're doing something like this 📈 1/
Picture of average gas prices for the last 18 months. Ouch.
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Southern Economic Journal @southerneconj.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Zachary Bartsch at Ave Maria University shows how coffee became a substitute for alcohol during prohibition in the US between 1920 and 1933. #alcohol #coffee #prohibition onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Prohibition and Percolation: The Roaring Success of Coffee During US Alcohol Prohibition
During US alcohol prohibition, 1920 to 1933, alcohol consumption fell dramatically. Less well known is that coffee consumption surged as a legal alternative. Using import data and a variety of textua...
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APDU @apduorg.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
"Our baseline estimate implies that preserving trust in the integrity and quality of official statistics generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the agency’s budget." www.nber.org/papers/w35135 HT @ericagroshen.bsky.social
nber.org
The Value of Reliable Statistics
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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Lilly Springer @springerecon.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
I am on the #EconJobMarket this year! I work on questions about women’s health, family, & labor. In my #JMP I study how changes in abortion access affect infant and maternal health, finding that reductions in access harm health at birth. Read the full manuscript here: lillyspringer.com
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CESifo @cesifo.org · 03/03/2025
🚨Working Paper Alert! “Refugee Immigration and Natives’ Fertility” by Aya Aboulhosn, Cevat Giray Aksoy & @berkayozcan.bsky.social 📈Discover how native fertility rates rise in response to forced migration: www.cesifo.org/en/publicati... 📚 Explore more: www.cesifo.org/en/publicati...
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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 26/04/2026
This should be required reading for any reporter investigating the neighborhood development effects that stadiums have. It was written before the Braves moved to Truist. The area has since rebounded to become one of Atlanta's up-and-coming areas.
atlantamagazine.com
The Other 284 Days - Atlanta Magazine
The story of Turner Field and its neighbors is one of stunted vision, cynical opportunism, halfhearted reform efforts, and misguided renewal schemes. Millions of dollars have been squandered and hundr...
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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 24/04/2026
Your reminder that sports events impose significant negative externalities from crime. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Prime Time for Crime? A Multi-City Analysis of Sporting Events, Sports Venues, and Crime - Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Journal of Quantitative Criminology - This study examines the relationship between sporting events and crime near sports venues based on a sample of Major League Baseball (MLB) and National...
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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 22/04/2026
You're going to be hearing a lot about the massive economic impact of the NFL Draft. New study from Frank Stephenson finds this isn't the case. Also examines a few other events, including Taylor Swift concerts, finding similarly small effects. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The NFL draft and host-city hotel occupancy

Abstract
Since 2015, the National Football League (NFL) draft has been held in various cities around the United States and has been accompanied by claims of large economic benefits. This paper uses daily hotel occupancy data to examine the effects of hosting the NFL draft. The results indicate the 2015–2018 drafts had negligible effects on room rentals and hotel revenue, while the 2019–2024 drafts (excluding 2020 and 2021) had statistically significant but small effects. The paper also presents estimates for other events held in draft-hosting cities, including NFL and other professional sports games, Formula One races, a Super Bowl, and Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concerts.
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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Gov. Mike Kehoe: "If the Royals were not here, we'd have zero. So these tools are about keeping those income flows here. So that makes it a net positive to the state." (That sound you just heard was a hundred economists banging their heads against their keyboards.)
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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' per-year lease subsidy falls well short of a record, but paying the owner of the NFL's most valuable team $18.2m/year to keep playing in what remains the gold standard for stadium design can't be seen as too much of a bargain.
fieldofschemes.com
Arlington council approves $273m in tax money for Cowboys stadium upgrades
Lost a bit amid all the Kansas City news was that down I-35 by Dallas, the Arlington city council voted 7-2 yesterday to approve $273 million in public money for upgrades to the Cowboys' 17-year-old s...
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Clay Collins @claycollins.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
A great table from Glen Wright’s Academia Obscura
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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 07/04/2026
Gosh, if only there was 50 years of research on this subject, which had reached a definitive conclusion that public stadiums are universally awful public investments....
We live in an era of “hot takes”, where being first to complain is often valued more than being right. But a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment project that could redefine Drew Park and the Dale Mabry Sports Corridor for the next half-century deserves more than a knee-jerk reaction. Let your elected officials and financial analysts do their due diligence, but demand that it be rigorous, transparent and grounded. Then let’s all sit down and determine whether a deal is truly worthy of all our trust.
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