Without a doubt, the 2010 World Cup of soccer in South Africa was a great experience for both soccer fans, who enjoyed a safe and efficiently-run tournament, and their South African hosts. The sporting and social spectacle was broadcast around the world and focused unprecedented media attention...

International sports will have to strengthen their efforts to exclude persons with morals in conflict with their sports. IOC and FIFA should mirror their top ambitions in athletic and financial areas by similarly leading ambitions to serve human mankind more generally. To encounter critiques...

We project the medal number and medal ranking for the Olympic Games in London in 2012. The largest relative increase is predicted for Brazil (80% more medals) and the UK (+28%). UK will continue to rank 4th. The largest decreases in medal numbers are predicted for Australia (-13%, but remains in...

Rose & Spiegel (2011) find that Olympic Games host countries experience significant positive and lasting effects on exports. They interpret their results as an indication that countries use the hosting of such an event as a signal of their (new) openness and competitiveness. We challenge these...

Rose & Spiegel (2011) find that Olympic Games host countries experience significant positive, lasting effects on exports. They interpret their results as an indication that countries use the hosting of such events to signal openness and competitiveness. We challenge these empirical findings on...

Recent analyses relate increases in the growth rate of countries to anticipation effects caused by bidding for the Olympic Games, so called news shocks. We argue that these findings should be interpreted cautiously. First, these analyses may suffer from an omitted variable bias because they...

To assess the likely effects of population ageing on the outcomes of direct democracy, we analyze the effect of age on voting decisions in public referenda. To this end, we provide the first quantitative review of the literature and a case study of the Stuttgart 21 referendum on one of the...

This contribution analyzes 132 factors on their potential to discriminate countries bidding for hosting the Olympic Games from non-bidding countries. Our binary, clustered model using generalized estimating equations (GEE) shows that countries recording long-term economic growth and pursuing a...

We investigate whether soccer players collect their fifth yellow card and their suspension by choice. Using data for the German Bundesliga for the seasons 13/14 to 16/17, we show that the quality of the player's own team, the quality of the teams participating in the next matches, and whether a...

This paper examines the probability of the success of city bid campaigns on the basis of quantified determinants for a total of 48 bids for the Summer Olympic Games between 1992 and 2012. Using a model comprising the distance of sporting venues from the Olympic Village, local temperatures and...