One of the most important social effects of the 2006 football World Cup was the feel-good effect. The present contribution is one of the first to deal with the development of a general theory for the management of feel-good effects and systematically analyses the influencing factors taking the...

For the FIFA World Cup 2010, South Africa plans to invest heavily. The positive economic effects that the country is hoping for stand in contrast to almost all statistical ex-post studies. This contribution emphasises that these results, usually from research under-taken in the USA, can only be...

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...

In this paper we consider trends in the distribution of player talent across association football clubs over time. Player talent is the most important prerequisite for team success in professional sports leagues and changes in players' assortativeness in regard to the clubs they play for may...