Research

Peer Effects in Horse Racing: A Tripartite Decomposition of Competitive Responses

Tandem J. Young

April 2026 Working Paper

Estimates whether field composition causally affects individual horse performance using the 2023 Equibase dataset (42,618 races; 318,702 horse-race entries). A one-point increase in leave-out mean competitor quality raises a horse’s own speed rating by 0.10–0.21 Beyer points across OLS, horse fixed effects, two independent instrumental-variable strategies, and a claiming-race subsample. The paper’s main contribution is a tripartite decomposition of peer effects into horse, jockey, and trainer channels: horses exhibit a positive competitive response to stronger fields (+0.188), while jockeys and trainers show negative tactical effects (−0.085 and −0.063). Better horses respond more strongly to competition — a convex “rising to competition” pattern that contrasts with the discouragement effect documented in golf.

JEL Codes: D82, J24, L83, Z20

Wildlife Management Areas, Deer Quality, and Rural Land Values: A Spatial Hedonic Analysis of Arkansas

Tandem J. Young

April 2026 · Dissertation chapter Working Draft

Develops and validates a spatial hedonic pipeline for estimating how public hunting lands affect rural land values in Arkansas. The “WMA within ¼ mile” coefficient is stable at approximately −0.19 across nine identification-robustness perturbations, with a placebo distribution confirming the effect is specific to actual WMA locations (p < 0.001). Built on 308,220 tax-assessed agricultural parcels matched to seventeen spatial controls — soil quality, hydrology, land cover, roads, urban access, federal public lands, gas wells, CRP, elevation, and deer- and disease-management zones — the validated pipeline is designed to detect the theoretically predicted positive gradient once sale data are acquired.