The National Football League (NFL) has recently received significant negative media attention surrounding the safety of its players, revolving largely around the long term health risks of playing the sport. Recent premature deaths and instances of suicide associated with chronic traumatic...

This study uses the case of professional soccer to investigate the determinants of human capital (HC) specificity. Inspired by labor market research, we formulate three hypotheses on how uncertainty about the usefulness of individuals’ (more productive) specific skills affects their investment...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this paper analyses the effects of spending part of adolescents’ leisure time on playing music or doing sports, or both. We find that while playing music fosters educational outcomes compared to doing sports, particularly so for girls and...

There is little evidence in support of the main economic rationale for regulating athletic doping: that doping reduces fan interest. The introduction of random testing for performance-enhancing drugs (PED) by Major League Baseball (MLB) offers unique data to investigate the issue. The...

This paper adds to the literature on competitive balance in college sports by comparing men's and women's NCAA basketball. Using data from the Division I National Championships, we find evidence consistent with the idea that women’s college basketball is less competitively balanced than...

A number of authors have identified the determinants of success in international sporting competitions such as the Olympics and soccer’s World Cup. This paper serves to update past work on international women’s soccer performance given the rapid development of the game over the past decade....

Lotteries represent an important source of government revenues in many states and countries, so they are of interest to public finance economists. In addition, lotteries provide researchers interested in microeconomic theory and consumer behavior with a type of experimental lab that allows...

This paper evaluates the magnitude and the economic impact of NFL mega-events including the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl. The paper also reviews the theory behind the usual findings that the observed economic benefits of mega-events are almost always a fraction of the benefits claimed a priori.

This paper presents an annotated bibliography of all papers relating to the economics of lotteries as of early to mid 2011. All published scholarly papers that could be identified by the authors are included along with the published abstract where available.

This study examines ways in which workers respond to implicit incentives. Specifically, we examine the extent to which workers shift their effort to activities that are measured and which have been previously rewarded in the labor market. To examine this question, we examine the changes in the...