Episode 004: Jadrian Wooten on Using Sports to Carve Out a Career in Economics – Sports Economics

Jadrian Wooten is an Economics lecturer at Pennsylvania State University. Jadrian’s research focuses primarily on sports economics. He has a PhD from Washington State University and an MBA from Sam Houston State University.  He analyses various economic concepts that otherwise would not be evident by a typical sports fan or analyst. Jadrian shares his passion for teaching economics and believes that an interactive classroom is the best learning environment.

Economics and Finance Themes:

In this interview, Jadrian mentions and discusses: economics in sports, price discrimination, market structures, decision-making, some of his academic papers, over-confidence, Billy Bean, John Nash, Jim Cramer, stock markets, behavioral psychology, herding, contrarian investors, unemployment, labor economics and loss-aversion.

Jadrian’s Influencers:

His past lecturers, particularly Professor Mark Frank and Professor Darren Grant of Sam Houston State University.

Find Out:

• how Jadrian found a love for economics and the moment he wanted to teach it.

• which academic paper made Jadrian realise that you can combine sports with economics and have the ‘dream job’.

• about Jadrian’s unique teaching style and how it culminated from the collective influences of past professors.

• how Jadrian used billions of tweets on Twitter to identify over-confidence in a sport pundits’ predictions of outcomes in games.

• who has a better prediction rate for sports results – amateurs or pundits.

• what type of words you should use so as to increase your Twitter followers.

• Jadrian’s opinion on online learning and the use of social media in knowledge sharing.

Advice:

The more you read, even books that are non-academic, you can see economic applications.

Personal Habits:

• Jadrian sees economics all around him and has developed a new passion for it each semester. Jadrian focuses a lot of his time and effort outside of the classroom on explaining economics to people who may not be taking it in school. Whether that’s online or whether they are doing research, Jadrian likes to talk to them about how economics can be used in their everyday life.

• “My goal is try to get people reading about economics or thinking about economics. Even if they are not going to university, there are still plenty of popular press books that they can use to kind of learn the basics and get excited about it” – Jadrian Wooten.
  

• Jadrian has a unique style that a lot of people don’t understand but it comes from the influences of his past teachers. 
  I am a collective piece of all of my former teachers – Jadrian Wooten

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• “I am a word minimizer when it comes to slides. I love talking. I have no problem chatting with students and being in front of the classroom.”

• “I am a big believer in showing them data, showing them graphs, showing them stuff that’s actually going on – actual application.”

• “I am a big believer in the ‘Zero Inbox’. I don’t keep e-mails in my inbox. If something comes into my e-mail, I’ll respond to it immediately if I can.”

Takeaway:

If you think you have the ability when you start and if you put your mind to it, you can achieve the things that you want to do and if you don’t think that you can do it, then you know that’s also true, you are going to end up failing because of self-defeat.

‘Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young and the greatest you can do is to keep your mind young’ – Mark Twain

Recommended Books:

• Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by Tobias Moskowitz

Favorite Internet Resource:

• Calendly.com makes life easy for business professionals and their customers by streamlining administrative tasks through simple, beautiful scheduling software.

Where to Find Jadrian Wooten:

• Twitter: @wootenomics
• http:www.jadrianwooten.com

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