Larry Hadley Service Award
In recognition of the late Larry Hadley and his many valuable service contributions to the field of Sports Economics, the North American Association of Sports Economists (NAASE) created an award in his honor. This award is given every four years to a deserving recipient who has distinguished herself or himself through service to the Association and the field of sports economics. While individuals can contribute to sports economics in many ways, this award is intended to honor those whose contributions are deemed unusual and outstanding in scope and duration.
Larry Hadley was a distinguished economist and long time faculty member at the University of Dayton who helped launch the burgeoning field of sports economics. Together with Elizabeth Gustafson, he organized one of the first sessions on sports economics at the Western Economics Association (WEA) meetings in 1995. Based on the popularity of these sessions, together with the growing worldwide interest in the discipline, the WEA currently allocates about twenty sessions at the annual meetings to sports economics.
One result of Larry’s efforts to initiate and nurture these annual sessions was the formation of the NAASE in 2007. Beyond organizing conference activities, Larry co-edited two widely cited and popular volumes of collected papers which surveyed a number of important research topics in the field. Finally, Larry was also a member of numerous editorial boards and scholarly associations, including the Journal of Sports Economics and the International Association of Sports Economists.
2022 Winner: Dennis Coates
Dennis Coates is Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County. He is author of numerous articles and currently serves as the editor of the Journal of Sports Economics and also edits the sports economics series for Springer Publishing. He was one of the founding members of the North American Association of Sports Economics.
2018 Winner: Placido Rodriguez
Placido Rodriguez is Professor of Economics and Sports Economics at the University of Oviedo, Spain. He is the author of numerous articles and the editor of many collected volumes on sports economics. In addition to his economic research, he is the former president of the Real Sporting de Gijón football club. Professor Rodriguez provided enormous service to sports economics, and has clearly distinguished himself by organizing conferences that provided researchers in the field with a venue to present their research and an opportunity to interact with other scholars and make enduring international connections that promoted development of the field. His longstanding organization of conferences in Gijón nurtured and guided the field of sports economics. Without his service, the field of sports economics would not be where it is today.
2014 Winner: Leo Kahane
The Association awarded the 2014 Lawrence H. Hadley Distinguished Service Award to Leo Kahane. Professor Kahane received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and is Professor of Economics at Providence College after previously serving on the faculties of California State University- East Bay and Mt. Holyoke College. The author of several dozen refereed articles and book chapters, in February 2000, Leo founded the Journal of Sports Economics, the first journal dedicated solely to the field of sports economics. He went on to serve as the editor of the journal for 16 years as the journal doubled its number of annual issues and became widely respected as a leading economics journal, regardless of field.
2010 Winner: Elizabeth Gustafson 
The Association awarded the inaugural Lawrence H. Hadley Distinguished Service Award to Elizabeth Gustafson — a colleague, co-author, and good friend of Larry Hadley. Professor Gustafson received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, and served on the faculty at the University of Cincinnati, Miami of Ohio, and the University of Dayton (where she is currently the Associate Dean of the School of Business Administration). Elizabeth has a long and rich scholarly record which includes publications in the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Econometrics, and the Journal of Sports Economics. It was said that her service contributions to the Association, and to sports economics in general, are many and notable.
Graduate Student Paper Award
The NAASE Graduate Student Paper award is given every year to a Ph.D. student in economics or an allied field writing in the area of sports economics. The winner receives recognition from the Association and a cash award to defray expenses to present their work at a NAASE session.
| 2016 | Dante DeAntonio | Lehigh University | Do Holdouts pay? Estimating the Impact of Delayed Contractual Agreement on NFL Rookie Contract Values |
| 2017 | Radek Janhuba | CERGE- EI | Do Victories and Losses Matter? Effects of Football on Life Satisfaction |
| 2018 | Yulia Chikish | West Virginia University | Multiple Reference Points and Economic Decisions: Evidence from Figure Skating |
| 2019 | Josh Matti | West Virginia University | Frustrated Customers: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Yelp Reviews |
| 2020 | Candon Johnson | West Virginia University | The Impact of the Olympic Games on Employment Growth: A Synthetic Control Approach |
2023 To be announced