Beyond the Lab: N.C. A&T Professor, Former Professional Basketball Player Uses Sport to Teach Students Economics Principles

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (Aug. 25, 2026) – For many, sports have been a pathway to community, connection and entertainment. For Eduardo Minuci, Ph.D., basketball in particular is more than a field of study; it is a game he has known since childhood.

The son of a former Brazilian national team player and Olympian Fernando Minuci, he followed in his father’s footsteps onto the court and eventually represented Brazil himself on its national basketball team.

Now, as an economics professor in the Willie A. Deese College of Business and Economics at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, he uses the sport that shaped his life to teach students how data analytics, risk assessment and institutional rules influence the real-world decisions that people and organizations make.

Minuci started his economics career in banking, where he developed an interest in how risk influences decisions and incentives. But before beginning his academic career, he used an economics tool called risk assessment to evaluate the possible hazards of continuing his basketball career after an injury.

As he began teaching and connecting with students, Minuci discovered that basketball offered a similar accessible entry point for exploring those same economic principles.

“I like understanding the role of risks in the decisions and incentives within the banking system,” he said, “but as I started to connect with students, sports was just a natural way to start a conversation since they love talking about recent game scores and their favorite teams and players.”

Sports economics applies economic principles and data analytics to understand how players, teams and leagues make decisions. In Minuci’s teaching and research practices, that means examining how rules and financial structures in professional basketball influence the behavior of players, teams and organizations. Using data such as player performance, contracts, salaries and career histories, he studies labor-market trends and the incentives behind those decisions.

“Sports create a setting in which data is widely available, which allows us to test wage and career length models and generate really interesting implications, including investigating how discrimination could play a role within those labor dynamics,” said Minuci.

His forthcoming research with Zachary Rodriguez, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics at Union College, examines how WNBA players and teams respond to changes in collective bargaining agreements, or contracts between an employer and a labor union. The researchers found that players can strategically time their contracts around an upcoming agreement, positioning themselves to become free agents when new rules create opportunities for higher pay. Teams, anticipating those decisions, adjust their own contract and roster strategies.

Minuci’s research shows how changes to the rules can influence team composition, labor-market dynamics, winning and profitability, demonstrating how changes in policy can create new incentives and alter behavior. He hopes players and franchises can use his findings to inform their decisions while also contributing to conversations about collective bargaining and players’ rights. At the same time, he recognizes that teams must remain profitable for leagues to operate effectively.

Minuci is also building artificial intelligence-assisted research workflows into his courses, training students to use AI to enhance rather than substitute their learning. 

“Every team, like every firm, is trying to get the most out of limited resources,” he said. “We want our students showing employers they can use AI tools effectively and safely to increase their productivity and their value in the workforce.”

That experiential approach, Minuci believes, helps students leave his courses more confident about how to apply what they learn in unfamiliar settings. 

“Sports is a topic students feel knowledgeable talking about anytime,” he said. “Therefore, from there, we were able to see how what they’re interested in could be leveraged in a research setting, so that we could provide our students with experiences they could discuss in job interviews and graduate school applications later as well.”

Through sports economics, Minuci is showing students that the lessons found on the basketball court extend far beyond the game, since data analytics, rules and incentives shape outcomes in every market. He says understanding how to apply them can help people make better decisions in whatever field they choose.