Seminar: Sports Economics

Lecture 1.1 - The Market Structure of Sports Leagues

Background Reading:

• Fort, Rodney and James Quirk. "Cross-Subsidization, Incentives, and Outcomes in Professional Team Sports Leagues." Journal of Economic Literature 33(3), 1995: pp. 1265-1299.

• Neale, Walter. "The Peculiar Economics of Professional Sports: A Contribution to the Theory of the Firm in Sporting Competition and in Market Competition." Quarterly Journal of Economics 78(1), 1964: pp. 1-14.

• El-Hodiri, Mohamed and James Quirk. "An Economic Model of Professional Sports League." Journal of Political Economy 79(6), 1971: pp. 1302-1319.

• Noll, Roger. "The Organization of Professional Sports Leagues." Oxford Review of Economic Policy 19(4), 2003: pp. 530-551.

Selected Readings:

• Ferguson, Donald, Kenneth Stewart, J.C.H. Jones, and Andre Le Dressay. "The Pricing of Sports Events: Do Teams Maximize Profit?" The Journal of Industrial Economics 39(3), 1991: pp. 297-310.

• Ferguson, Donald, J.C.H. Jones, and Kenneth Stewart. "Competition with a Cartel: League Conduct and Team Conduct in the Market for Baseball Player Services." The Review of Economics and Statistics 82(3), 2000: pp. 422-430.

Lecture 1.2 - Competitive Balance in Professional Sports

Background Readings:

• Zimbalist, Andrew. "Competitive Balance in Sports Leagues: An Introduction." Journal of Sports Economics 3(2), 2002: pp. 111-121.

• Sanderson, Allen. "The Many Dimensions of Competitive Balance." Journal of Sports Economics 3(2), 2002: pp. 204-228.

• Fort, Rodney and Joel Maxcy. "Comment - Competitive Balance in Sports Leagues: An Introduction." Journal of Sports Economics 4(2), 2003: pp. 154-160.

• Zimbalist, Andrew. "Reply - Competitive Balance Conundrum: Response to Fort and Maxcy's Comment." Journal of Sports Economics 4(2), 2003: pp. 161-163.

• Sanderson, Allen and John Siegfried. "Thinking About Competitive Balance." Journal of Sports Economics 4(4), 2003: pp. 255-279.

Selected Readings:

• Szymanski, Stefan. "Income Inequality, Competitive Balance, and the Attractiveness of Team Sports: Some Evidence and a Natural Experiment from English Soccer." The Economic Journal 111(469), 2001: pp. F69-F84.

• Coates, Dennis, Brad R. Humphreys, and Li Zhou. "Reference-Dependent Preferences, Loss Aversion, and Live Game Attendance." Economic Inquiry 52(3), 2014: pp. 959-973.

Lecture 2.1 - The Economics of Sports Stadiums

Background Reading:

• Siegfried, John and Andrew Zimbalist. "The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities." Journal of Economic Perspectives 14(3), 2000: pp. 95-114.

• Decker, Paul T. "Point/Counterpoint: Should Governments Subsidize the Construction of New Professional Sports Facilities?" Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 38(1), 2019: pp. 263-281.

Selected Readings:

• Tu, Charles. "How Does a New Sports Stadium Affect Housing Values? The Case of FedEx Field." Land Economics 81(3), 2005: pp. 379-395.

• Baade, Robert, Robert Baumann, and Victor Matheson. "Selling the Game: Estimating the Economic Impact of Professional Sports Through Taxable Sales." Southern Economic Journal 74(3), 2008: pp. 794-810.

Lecture 2.2 - The Economics of Mega-Events

Background Reading:

• Bernard, Andrew and Meghan Busse. "Who Wins the Olympic Games: Economic Resources and Medal Totals." Review of Economics and Statistics 86(1), 2004: pp. 413-417.

• Baade, Robert A. and Victor A. Matheson. "Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics." Journal of Economic Perspectives 30(2), 2016: pp. 201-218.

Selected Readings:

• Hagn, Florian and Wolfgang Maennig. "Employment Effects of the Football World Cup 1974 in Germany." Labour Economics 15(5), 2008: pp. 1062-1075.

• Hagn, Florian and Wolfgang Maennig. "Large Sports Events and Unemployment: The Case of the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany." Applied Economics 41(25-27), 2009: pp. 3295-3302.

• Kavestos, Georgios and Stefan Szymanski. "National Well-being and International Sports Events." Journal of Economic Psychology 31(2), 2010: pp. 158-171.

• Rose, Andrew and Mark Spiegel. "The Olympic Effect." Economic Journal 121(553), 2011: pp. 652-677.

• Maennig, Wolfgang and Relix Richter. "Exports and Olympic Games: Is There a Signal Effect?" Journal of Sports Economics 13(6), 2012: pp. 635-641.

Lecture 3.1 - Labor Markets in Professional Sports

Background Reading:

• Kahn, Lawrence. "The Sports Business as a Labor Market Laboratory." Journal of Economic Perspectives 14(3), 2000: pp. 75-94.

Selected Readings:

• Scully, Gerald. "Pay and Performance in Major League Baseball." American Economic Review 64(6), 1974: pp. 915-930.

• Krautmann, Anthon. "What's Wrong with Scully-Estimates of a Player's Marginal Revenue Product." Economic Inquiry 37(2), 1999: pp. 369-381.

• Kahn, Lawrence. "Free Agency, Long-Term Contracts, and Compensation in Major League Baseball: Estimates from Panel Data." Review of Economics & Statistics 75(1), 1993: pp. 157-164.

• Humphrey, Brad R. and Hyunwoong Pyun. "Monopsony Exploitation in Professional Sport: Evidence from Major League Baseball Positional Players, 2000-2011." Managerial and Decision Economics 38(5), 2017: pp. 676-688.

Lecture 3.2 - Discrimination

Selected Readings:

• Kahn, Lawrence and Peter Sherer. "Racial Differences in Professional Basketball Players' Compensation." Journal of Labor Economics 6(1), 1988: pp. 40-61.

• Szymanski, Stefan. "A Market Test for Discrimination in the English Professional Soccer Leagues." Journal of Political Economy 108(3), 2000: pp. 590-603.

• Price, Joseph and Justin Wolfers. "Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees." Quarterly Journal of Economics 125(4), 2010: pp. 1859-1887.

• Pope, Devin, Joseph Price, and Justin Wolfers. "Awareness Reduces Racial Bias." Management Science 64(11), 2018: pp. 4988-4995.

• Parsons, Christopher, Johan Sulaeman, Michael Yates, and Daniel Hamermesh. "Strike Three: Discrimination, Incentives, and Evaluation." American Economic Review 101(4), 2011: pp. 1410-1435.

Lecture 3.3 - Peer Effects in Sports

Selected Readings:

• Idson, Todd and Leo Kahane. "Team Effects on Compensation: An Application to Salary Determination in the National Hockey League." Economic Inquiry 38(2), 2000: pp. 345-357.

• Kendall, Todd. "Spillovers, Complementarities, and Sorting in Labor Markets with an Application to Professional Sports." Southern Economic Journal 70(2), 2003: pp. 389-402.

• Kahane, Leo, Neil Longley, and Robert Simmons. "The Effects of Co-Worker Heterogeneity of Firm-Level Output: Assessing the Impacts of Cultural and Language Diversity in the National Hockey League." The Review of Economics and Statistics 95(1), 2013: pp. 302-314.

• Guryan, Jonathan, Kory Kroft, and Matthew Notowidigdo. "Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1(4), 2009: pp. 34-68.

• Arcidiacono, Peter, Josh Kinsler, and Joseph Price. "Productivity Spillovers in Team Production: Evidence from Professional Basketball." Journal of Labor Economics 35(1), 2017: pp. 191-225.

• Kuehn, Joseph. "Accounting for Complementary Skill Sets: Evaluating Individual Marginal Value to a Team in the National Basketball Association." Economic Inquiry 55(3), 2017: pp. 1556-1578.

Lecture 3.4 - Gender Issues in Sports: Title IX

• Carroll, Kathleen and Brad Humphreys. "Nonprofit Decision Making and Social Regulation: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Title IX." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 43(3), 2000: pp. 359-376.

• Anderson, Deborah and John Cheslock. "Institutional Strategies to Achieve Gender Equity in Intercollegiate Athletics: Does Title IX Harm Male Athletes?" American Economic Review 94(2), 2004: pp. 307-311.

• Stevenson, Betsey. "Beyond the Classroom: Using Title IX to Measure the Return to High School Sports." Review of Economics and Statistics 92(2), 2010: pp. 284-301.

• Wozniak, David. "Gender Differences in a Market with Relative Performance Feedback: Professional Tennis Players." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 83(1), 2012: pp. 158-171.

• Booth, Alison and Eiji Yamamura. "Performance in Mixed-Sex and Single-Sex Competition: What We Can Learn from Speedboat Races in Japan." The Review of Economics and Statistics 100(4), 2018: pp. 581-593.

Lecture 4.1 - The Economics of the NCAA

Background Reading:

• Kahn, Lawrence. "Cartel Behavior and Amateurism in College Sports." Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(1), 2007: pp. 209-226.

• Sanderson, Allen and John Siegfried. "The Case for Paying College Athletes." Journal of Economic Perspectives 29(1), 2015: pp. 115-138.

Selected Readings:

• Lindo, Jason M., Isaac D. Swensen, and Glen R. Waddell. "Are Big-Time Sports a Threat to Student Achievement?" American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 4(4), 2012: pp. 254-274.

• Anderson, Michael. "The Benefits of College Athletic Success: An Application of the Propensity Score Design." The Review of Economics and Statistics 99(1), 2017: pp. 119-134.