In order to avoid too many tied games after playing the five-minute overtime period, the National Hockey League introduced two rule changes in the 1999-2000 season. First, a team that loses in overtime receives one point instead of zero points. Second, the number of skaters in overtime is...

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...

This paper analyses the short- to medium-term determinants of demand for professional team sports. Focusing on the economically important demand for TV broadcasts in this area, Dietl/Franck/Roy enter territory that is mostly unexplored by sports economists so far. Several potential determinants...

This paper studies the welfare effect of a percentage-of-revenue salary cap in a European context with win-maximizing clubs. It shows that a percentage-of-revenue cap increases competitive balance and decreases the overall salary payments in the league, therefore contributing to financial...

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...