Improving managerial decision making quality in the NBA draft : a closer look at the policy behavioural economic dynamics and cognitive biases The thesis explores the intricacies of the NBA Draft. This mechanism is a policy a professional basketball league installed to foster competitive balance within their self created market. The goals of this regulation are clear and noble. It provides great intentions and attractive potential benefits for most stakeholders involved. The entire league and its franchises would immensely profit from a perfectly functioning draft regulation. Nonetheless historically it has failed to produce many of the positive outcomes it was intended to provide. This thesis explores this dissonance through the lens of behavioral economics. The application of the NBA Draft policy hinges on human decision making. However making choices in a complex environment like professional sports is incredibly difficult. It can be brutally unforgiving due uncontrollable factors. And yet managerial decision making quality within the mechanism can almost certainly be improved. The primary objective of this dissertation is to investigate the entire NBA Draft mechanism from a behavioral economic perspective. Using this approach the overarching goal is to identify segments within the underlying managerial decision making processes that offer room for decision making quality improvement. These improvements in judgements and choices which ultimately could lead to a superior policy performance on a league wide level could either be achieved due to avoiding error producing biases or enhancing the information subsequent draft decisions are based on. To reach this main objective four academic papers were written to tackle important sub issues. All articles provide sources for decision making quality improvements within the NBA Draft setup. These are not only supposed to increase the performance of the individual managers and franchises but also to enhance the results of the overarching league wide policy with benefits for many stakeholders.