Recent theoretical research has identified many ways how contracts can be used as rent seeking devices vis-à-vis third parties, but there is no empirical evidence on this issue so far. To test some basic qualitative properties of this literature, we develop a theoretical and empirical framework...

This paper investigates how students’ collegiate athletic participation affects their subsequent labor market success. It uses newly developed distributional tests to establish that the wage distribution of former college athletes is significantly different from non-athletes and that athletic...

We investigate the role of fatigue in soccer (football). Although this issue is important for the "productivity" of players and the optimal organization of national and international championships, empirical evidence is lacking. We use data on all the matches played by national teams in all the...

This paper examines how professional female tennisplayers react to: i) prize incentives and ii) heterogeneity in ex ante players’ abilities. It is found that a larger prize spread encourages women to increase effort, even when controlling for many tournament and player characteristics. Further...

We study the impact of managers on the success of professional soccer teams using data from the German "Bundesliga". We evaluate the performance impact of individual managers by estimating regression models that include both team and manager fixed effects, where we are exploiting the high...

This paper estimates racial differences in the retention probability, pay and performance of NBA coaches over the 1996-2003 period. Using a hazard function approach, I find small and statistically insignificant racial differences in the exit hazard, conditional on team performance, team payroll,...

We often observe minority ethnic groups at a disadvantage relative to the majority. Why is this and what can be done about it? Efforts made to assimilate, and time, are two elements working to bring the minority into line with the majority. A third element, the degree to which the majority...

In this paper we consider the interaction between local workers and migrants in the production process of a firm. Both local workers and migrants can invest effort in assimilation activities in order to increase the assimilation of the migrants into the firm and thereby increase their...

There is a well-established high quality literature on the role of networks, particularly ethnic networks, in international trade. Ethnic networks are a way of overcoming informal barriers (information costs, risk and uncertainty) to trade by building trust and substituting for the difficulty of...