Economic theories of superstar emergence concentrate on the perceived quality of the star’s performance. Thus superstars are identified by perceived talent superiority. Information technology and mass media have recently released a new type of stars: celebrities who are just known for being...

We show that both talent and popularity significantly contribute to stars’ market values in German soccer. The talent-versus-popularity controversy on the sources of stardom goes back to Rosen (1981) and Adler (1985). All attempts to resolve the controversy empirically face the difficulty of...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of nationalvariety within a team on team performance. Due to ãlanguage incompatibilityÒ, the teamÕs corresponding productivity should be expected to decrease with the number of nationalities, as misunderstandings would occur more often. On...

In spite of Microsoft’s quasi monopoly position in the market for operating systems Linux has succeeded to become a serious competitor of Microsoft Windows. From an economic standpoint this fact raises some puzzles. In this paper we focus on the development and production of a complex team...

Software developed and produced in open source projects has become an important competitor in the software industry. Since it can be downloaded for free and no wages are paid to developers, the open source endeavor seems to rest on voluntary contributions by hobbyists. In the discussion of this...

So far the “market power view” has been the dominant perspective of look-ing at the institutional setup of American major leagues. As useful as the in-sights generated by this approach may at the level of competition policy, they do not shed much light on the question of internal league...

In der Schweizer Waldwirtschaft orientieren sich die Grenzen der Forstreviere häufig an den Grenzen der Gemeindeperimeter. Revierleitung und Leitung des revieransässigen öffentlichen Forstbetriebes liegen traditionell in der Hand einer Person. Die aktuelle Diskussion über die...

The purpose of this study is to analyze whether previous results describing the effect of uncertainty of outcome on match attendance in team sports have been driven by heterogeneity in fan demand. We apply censored quantile regression methods and place particular emphasis on the relationship...

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...