Many previous attempts to estimate attendance demand for sporting events have concluded that teams with market power are nonetheless pricing tickets in the inelastic portion of the demand curve. These studies, however, have suffered from problems with price and seat quality measurement,...

Long-term deals are one tool that both players and franchises use to manage risk. That tool has been much discussed and empirically tested with respect to player shirking, and has more briefly, and only theoretically, discussed with respect to reducing variance in future payrolls. Our work looks...

In our 2006 paper, we examined the implications of Michael Lewis’ book for the labor market in Major League Baseball. Our tests provided econometric support for Lewis’ claim of mis-pricing in the baseball labor market’s valuation of batting skills. We also found suggestive evidence that...

Using a panel of Major League Baseball team attendance data for the period 1950 to 2003, the authors determined that after controlling for team quality and other factors, a new modern era ballpark adds 22 to 30 percent to total attendance over a 10-year period and, on average, generated...