Submitted by Econbrowser

Amazing championship game for the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament.

With few “Cinderellas” this year, the Team Rankings benchmark predictions did better than 99.7% of the 3.2 million entries in the ESPN Tournament Challenge. I managed to outperform Team Rankings slightly with my odd prediction that Villanova could make the Sweet Sixteen.

But I didn’t realize when we set up the 2008 NCAA Bracket Econbrowser Challenge that some real professionals would move into our little neighborhood. Congrats (in addition to the promised honor and/or glory) to H. Parsley, who successfully predicted not just the tournament winner, but also the teams in the championship game, the Final Four, and the Elite Eight. Parsley was top dog in the Econbrowser pool and in the top 99.98% of the 3.2 million national entries. Second and third went to M. Goodrum and C. Ashbee.

Seems pretty darn good to have come in fourth in such a group, and in fact the same entry was good enough for first place in the Environmental Economics NCAA Pool, which actually offered a prize. I eagerly await my bumper sticker advising “Drive Less”

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