Paul Oyer

An engaging look at the ways economic thinking can help us understand how sports work both on and off the field “Mr. Oyer writes clearly and ranges across all sorts of sports as well as across the globe, introducing fascinating observations.”—Henry D. Fetter, Wall Street Journal Are ticket scalpers good for teams? Should parents push their kids to excel at sports? Why do Koreans dominate women’s golf, while Kenyans and Ethiopians dominate marathon racing? Why would Michael Jordan, the greatest player in basketball, pass to Steve Kerr for the game-winning shot? Paul Oyer shows the many ways economics permeates the world of sports. His topics range from the business of sport to how great athletes use economic thinking to outsmart their opponents to why the world’s greatest sports powerhouse (at least per capita) is not America or China but the principality of Liechtenstein. Economics explains why some sports cannot stop the use of performance-enhancing drugs while others can, why hundred-million-dollar player contracts are guaranteed in baseball but not in football, how one man was able to set the world of sports betting on its ear—and why it will probably never happen again. This book is an entertaining guide to how a bit of economics can make you a better athlete and a more informed fan.

THREE TOP MBA PROFESSORS - ONE BIG ROAD TRIP Full of powerful insights about product differentiation, pricing, brand management and tactics for battling the 'Big Boys', The Roadside MBA takes the blue-chip knowledge and tactics of Wall Street, and brings them to the High Street. Paul Oyer, Michael Mazzeo and Scott Schaefer have taught thousands of MBAs at some of the world's leading business schools. While travelling back from an economics conference together they dropped into a shoe store in Maine and chatted to the staff - and quickly realized that the strategic problems faced by small businesses are just as rich and compelling as anything challenging Microsoft or General Electric. These three wise men decided to go in search of real-world case studies that illustrate the key lessons of an MBA. The result is a rollicking American road trip that is both a great introduction for business owners who haven't done an MBA, and an entertaining refresher for those who have.

In this "refreshingly different" high-toned business book, three leading business school professors take to America's back roads in search of offbeat small businesses--enterprises that hold valuable lessons for executives and entrepreneurs everywhere (Bloomberg Businessweek). While playing hooky from a conference in Boston a few years back, three former colleagues from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management hopped in a car and embarked on a life-changing road trip. They pulled into a shoe store in Maine and noticed that the sales help was unusually pushy. After a few questions, they discovered the store had a "secret shopper" program, in which employees would be marked down if they were not sufficiently aggressive with customers. A lightbulb went off. Instead of teaching the tried-and-true case studies involving GE and Microsoft, these three men decided to pull their heads out of their ivory towers and search for insights about product differentiation, pricing, brand management, building a team, and a host of other topics. Why take your cues on employee compensation from Wall Street when you can learn from a Main Street company like Couer D'Alene's best crime-scene cleaner? Want to learn about scaling a business? Come meet Dr. Burris, the flying orthodontist, who operates multiple, profitable practices in rural Arkansas. Spiced with vehicular mishaps and unexpected finds, this is one business book you won't want to miss.

Conquering the dating market--from an economist's point of view After more than twenty years, economist Paul Oyer found himself back on the dating scene--but what a difference a few years made. Dating was now dominated by sites like Match.com, eHarmony, and OkCupid. But Oyer had a secret weapon: economics. It turns out that dating sites are no different than the markets Oyer had spent a lifetime studying. Monster.com, eBay, and other sites where individuals come together to find a match gave Oyer startling insight into the modern dating scene. The arcane language of economics--search, signaling, adverse selection, cheap talk, statistical discrimination, thick markets, and network externalities--provides a useful guide to finding a mate. Using the ideas that are central to how markets and economics and dating work, Oyer shows how you can apply these ideas to take advantage of the economics in everyday life, all around you, all the time. For all online daters--and for anyone else swimming in the vast sea of the information economy--this book uses Oyer's own experiences, and those of millions of others, to help you navigate the key economic concepts that drive the modern age.