basketball and marriage premium

I've always been interested in basketball the most among professional sports though I haven't played it seriously in my life. This semester I've tried taking a PE course but couldn't fit it into my schedule and ended up taking tennis, which I thought might be a better idea in any way.

But finally, I think I am seriously getting a step further into the world of basketball through a different channel - economics. Well, I've never imagined myself doing any analysis with sport statistics. Even when Professor Wang was giving out some fascinating statistical analysis with baseball data in his uniquely entertaining way, I was never drawn to regard sports as a subject of my statistical analysis.

This semester, however, I think I am going to write a long, in-depth paper using sport statistics on NBA players. I will mainly investigate whether there exists a marriage premium on the productivity of NBA players. Does marriage enhance a player's game performance (measured by scores per game divided by the number of attempts at goals)?

I am still at a very much beginning step to predict anything. But I'm hoping to see some positive effect of marriage on productivity to provide a more interesting result and convince myself there has got to be some reason other than the fact that marriage is a social norm if almost everyone gets married at least once in their life.

I'm excited for this project - it'd be fun - except that I'd have to devote so many nights and days, including my spring break, to struggle to find a good instrument, deal with Stata, and justify my methodology. Agh!