This paper applies contest theory to provide an integrated framework of a team sports league and analyses the competitive interaction between clubs. We show that dissipation of the league revenue arises from `overinvestment' in playing talent as a direct consequence of the ruinous competitive...

Media companies enjoy increasing marginal returns if more customers watch a program. The viewer drawing capability of stars serves as a prominent instrument to increase audiences. However, lately there has been a significant shift in the kind of stars employed by the media from “self-made”...

Our paper analyzes the incentive structures for academics in US and German Higher Education that have developed under different institutional frameworks. Both incentive structures are internally consistent in the sense that they fit into their specific institutional background. Whereas the...

This paper studies the relationship between talent disparity and team productivity based on panel data from German soccer teams. Holding average ability and unobserved team heterogeneity constant, we find evidence that the players selected to play on the competition team should be rather...

This paper analyzes the institutional setup of major league sports. In particular, it looks at reasons for the organization of leagues as cooperatives of team-owners, the specific employment relation of a commissioner as enforcement mechanism for rules of the league, and the centralized...

There is a well-established literature on separately testing the prediction power of different betting market settings. This paper provides an inter-market comparison of the forecasting accuracy between bookmakers and a major betting exchange. Employing a dataset covering all football matches...

Auf dem Markt für Informationen über feine Weine konnte sich Robert M. Parker eine dominante Stellung als sogenannter Weinkritiker aufbauen. Der vorgelegte Beitrag hat zum Ziel, die ökonomischen Mechanismen und „Geschäftsmodelle“ offen zu legen, die hinter Parkers Erfolg als Weinkritiker...

The analysis focuses on the basic institutional mechanisms governing open source software development. It explains why these institu-tional mechanisms enable rent-seeking without crowding out donative behavior. The “symbiotic” institutional arrangements translate into an ability to attract...

There is an on-going debate about the optimal degree of team solidarity in professional European soccer leagues. Support for a high degree of team solidarity has been coming from the theory of competitive balance, which states that diminished uncertainty of outcome will result in reduced...