from Amazon
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
The Peer Effect of Jose Canseco
I haven’t read it yet, but here’s the summary:
Using panel data on baseball players, we show that a player’s performance increases significantly after they played with Jose Canseco. After checking 30 comparable players from the same era, we find that no other baseball player produced a similar effect. Clearly, Jose Canseco had an unusual influence on the productivity of his peers. These results are consistent with Canseco’s controversial claims, and suggest that workers not only learn productive skills from their co-workers, but sometimes those skills may derive from unethical practices. These findings may be relevant to many workplaces where competitive pressures create incentives to adopt unethical means to boost productivity and profits.
I read through it quickly. The statistical work seems reasonable, with one major caveat. The “playing with Canseco” and the “after playing with Canseco” variables are almost certainly collinear with changes in ballparks (and hence ballpark effects) and with player experience (and hence with experience effects). The authors present no diagnostics of these effects. (This is especially a potential problem since their data set extends back to 1970, and, as I recall, Canseco didn’t play all that long ago (grin)).
Furthermore, I’d want to know if the effect persisted (for how long) or not.
I’ll admit that I’m predisposed to believe that Canseco has exaggerated what happened and his affect on other players, but this analysis, if it holds up, does give me pause.