Ivy League Athletic Performance

Dmitry Kotlyarenko and Ronald Ehrenberg
Additional contact information
Dmitry Kotlyarenko: Cornell University

Journal of Sports Economics, 2000, vol. 1, issue 2, 139-150

Abstract: This article analyzes the determinants of undergraduate varsity athletic teams’ success in the Ivy League, a conference that prohibits athletic scholarships and holds its varsity athletes to high academic standards. The theoretical model suggests that the same factors that determine the enrollment decisions of all students who attend these institutions, namely, the institutions’ perceived academic quality and the generosity of their financial aid programs, should determine athletic performance success. In addition, the authors hypothesize that institutions whose athletes’ academic credentials are close to those of their class as a whole should have poorer records than those that accept scholar athletes whose credentials are relatively weaker as compared with their classmates. The empirical analyses use data for the 1981-1982 to 1996-1997 academic years on the number of male and female titles each institution in the conference won and the number of league games each won in men’s basketball, football, and hockey. The authors find strong support for the first two hypotheses and mixed support for the third.

Date: 2000
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/152700250000100203 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:1:y:2000:i:2:p:139-150

DOI: 10.1177/152700250000100203

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Sports Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().