The impact of athletic performance on alumni giving
Subtitle: an analysis of micro data
By: Jonathan Meer, Harvey S. Rosen.
Contributors: Rosen, Harvey S.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 13937; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 13937.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "An ongoing controversy in the literature on the economics of higher education centers on whether the success of a school's athletic program affects alumni donations.  This paper uses a unique data set to investigate this issue.  The data contain detailed information about donations made by alumni of a selective research university as well as a variety of their economic and de-mographic characteristics.  One important question is how to characterize the success of an athletic program.  We focus not only on the performance of the most visible teams, football and basketball, but also on the success of the team on which he or she played as an undergraduate.  One of our key findings is that the impact of athletic success on donations differs for men and women.  When a male graduate's former team wins its conference championship, his donations for general purposes increase by about 7 percent and his donations to the athletic program increase by about the same percentage.  Football and basketball records generally have small and statistically insignificant effects; in some specifications, a winning basketball season reduces donations.  For women there is no statistically discernible effect of a former team's success on current giving; as is the case for men, the impacts of football and basketball, while statistically significant in some specifications, are not important in magnitude.  Another novel result is that for males, varsity athletes whose teams were successful when they were undergraduates subsequently make larger donations to the athletic program.  For example, if a male alumnus's team won its conference championship during his senior year, his subsequent giving to the athletic program is about 8 percent a year higher, ceteris paribus"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 7/2/2008.

Includes bibliographical references.

Also available in print.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.