Quantile Regression By: Ashley Nissenbaum
About the Author Leo H. Kahane Associate Professor at Providence College Research Sport economics, international trade, political science Editor of Journal of Sports Economics
Previous Research Golf earnings are highly positively skewed Schmanske (1992) Value of the marginal product from putting may be in the range of $500 per hour of practice. Alexander and Kern (2005) “Drive for show, putt for dough” Callan and Thomas (2007) Skills determine score, which determines rank and thus earnings
Earnings and Skewness Linear Regression Focuses on the behavior of the conditional mean of the dependent variable Most people make under $300K per event
Reasons for Skewness Payout Structure Non-linear Top 50% after the first two rounds: 1 st place receives 18%, 2 nd place receives 10.8%, 3 rd place receives 6.8%, 4 th place – 4.8%, etc Extraordinary Talented Golfers Tournament wins are spread across a large number of golfers
Tiger Woods Won 185 tournaments 14 professional major tournaments, 71 PGA Tour events $500 Million net worth Highest paid athlete from 2001 to 2012 $132 million from tournaments
Concept of Quantile Regression Equation for Quantile Regression: Where: y(i)= real earnings per PGA event Q= Specific quantile associated with the equation Β = Vector of coefficients to be estimated Ε = Error term X(i)= Covariates
Covariates x(i) = covariates expected to explain golf earnings Greens in regulation The percent of time a player was able to hit the green in regulation (greens hit in regulation / holes played x 100). Positive correlation expected. Putting average Average number of putts needed to finish a hole per green hit in regulation. Negative correlation expected. Save percentage Percentage of time a golfer was able to get the ball in the hole in two shots or less following landing in a greenside sand bunker (regardless of score). Positive correlation expected. Yards per drive Average number of yards per measured drive. Positive correlation expected. Driving accuracy Percentage of time a tee shot comes to rest in the fairway. Positive correlation expected.
Empirical Results Simple level OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) regression estimate:
OLS and Quantile Regression Results
Coefficients Graph