Fantasy (or rotisserie) leagues allow player to manage team members from a real-life competition to compose optimal teams. Fantasy leagues organize their own competitions and are popular in a variety of sports throughout the world. RePEc now has its own fantasy leagues, which allow players to manage economics departments. Specifically, there are two leagues.
Scratch league
Department owners in this league pick faculty members from the pool of authors registered in the RePEc Author Service and create departments from scratch. They need to keep a topical balance and all start with the same budget. Simulated departments are evaluated using the same criteria that underly the ranking of real life institutions.
Extant league
Here, department owners start from an existing department and then trade its faculty to improve it. Simulated departments are evaluated by comparing them to the existing ones they started from. Only economics departments are available for this league.
Markets
Both leagues work with separate markets for economists. Initial prices are based on current ranking scores of the registered economists. All currently registered economists are part of this market, and one can ask to be excluded from this market after log in.
Rules
Rules follow standard fantasy league rules. A few specificities for economists:
- Departments in the scratch league require that economists work in a balanced set of fields. These are based on which topical NEP mailing lists disseminated their working papers.
- One cannot short an economist.
- Newly registered economists are added to the pool with an initial price corresponding to their ranking after the release of new monthly rankings (between the thrid and fifth day of the month.
- Fantasy league rankings are not public.
- A department owner cannot add him/herself to a department. If member of the original department in the extant league, he/she has to immediately trade him/herself.
- One can play at most one department in each league.
- Legues do not follow a seasonal schedule, they are continuously open.
- Rules may be adjusted if the need arises.
The RePEc Blog 
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