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About Philip
Professor Philip Owen serves as a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Otago, which is part of the Otago Business School. His research specializations center on sports economics, focusing on the measurement and analysis of competitive balance and outcome uncertainty in professional team sports leagues. Owen's work employs advanced econometric techniques and industrial organization principles to evaluate competition dynamics, contributing significantly to the empirical literature in this niche field.
A cornerstone of his scholarship is the 2007 publication 'Measuring Competitive Balance in Professional Team Sports Using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index' co-authored with M. Ryan and C.R. Weatherston in the Review of Industrial Organization. This highly cited paper (over 250 citations) advocated for the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) as a superior alternative to traditional standard deviation-based measures, better capturing the concentration of competitive success. Building on this, Owen's 2010 working paper 'Limitations of the Relative Standard Deviation of Win Percentages as a Measure of Competitive Balance' critiqued conventional metrics and proposed refinements. In 2013 (published 2015 in Economic Inquiry), 'Competitive Balance Measures in Sports Leagues: The Effects of Variation in Season Length' used simulations to show how fixture numbers influence balance assessments across leagues. More recently, 'Simulation Evidence on Herfindahl-Hirschman Indices as Measures of Competitive Balance in Professional Sports Leagues' (Owen and C.A. Owen, 2022, Journal of the Operational Research Society) validated the HHI's robustness. Owen has also contributed to broader economic topics, including 'Do the Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment Have a Reverse and Symmetric Impact on Foreign Direct Divestment? Empirical Evidence' (Haug, Nguyen, and Owen, 2023) and earlier collaborations like 'Health Capital and Cross-Country Variation in Income Per Capita' (Knowles and Owen, 1995). These publications highlight Owen's enduring influence on methodological advancements in sports economics and related empirical analyses.