As long as we're on the subject...

It seems that sports is not the only arena in which people argue over hall of fame selection.

We study the results of elections of Fellows of the Econometric Society. We are motivated largely by the question of whether these elections are “fair,” where our definition of fairness is that votes are based solely on the quality of the candidates. If so, then conditional on quality other characteristics of the candidates (such as geographic location or subspecialty) should not influence the probability of election. We find that, conditional on a number of measures of the quality of the candidates, other characteristics do significantly predict election. For example, an Australian econometrician is less likely to be elected than a North America-based economic theorist. This is true whether or not we control for quality measures.

This from Hamermesh and Schmidt, The Determinants of Econometric Society Fellows Elections (subscription required). So while market size may not matter in baseball, it appears both market size and position matter for economists.

Now I just have to figure out how to get my HOF research published in Econometrica.