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Departure from independence and stationarity in a handball match

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 36; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02664760802499329

1360-0532

Montezuma Dumangane, Nicoletta Rosati, Anna Volossovitch,

Sports Analytics and Performance

Abstract This paper analyses direct and indirect forms of dependence in the probability of scoring in a handball match, taking into account the mutual influence of both playing teams. Non-identical distribution (i.d.) and non-stationarity, which are commonly observed in sport games, are studied through the specification of time-varying parameters. The model accounts for the binary character of the dependent variable, and for unobserved heterogeneity. The parameter dynamics is specified by a first-order auto-regressive process. Data from the Handball World Championships 2001–2005 show that the dynamics of handball violate both independence and i.d., in some cases having a non-stationary behaviour. Keywords: binary choicedynamic panel datatime-varying parametersunobserved heterogeneitydependencenon-stationarity Acknowledgements This study was supported in part by the Fundação para Ciência e a Tecnologia, program POCTI, partially funded by FEDER. The authors thank Jan Magnus, two anonymous referees, and participants to seminars at Cemapre-UTL, at CEFAGE-UEvora and at the PEJ, ESEM and RSS 2008 Conferences for helpful comments.