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...

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”...

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...

Media companies generally enjoy increasing profits if more customers watch a program. The viewer drawing capability of stars serves as a prominent instrument to increase the audience. The literature distinguishes between two different types of stars: highly talented and therefore 'self-made'...

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...

The impact of intra-team pay dispersion on team productivity is a highly discussed issue. On one hand, wage differentials provide incentives for higher employee effort. On the other hand, pay inequality discourages cooperation among team members, which reduces performance. Analyzing non-linear...

In 2002 the leading European football clubs reacted to the increasing player salaries by signing a voluntary agreement to limit player salaries to 70% of revenues. We analyze under which conditions a voluntary salary cap agreement is self-enforcing. Based on a simple model of a league with two...

Based on the competing theories of superstar formation proposed by Rosen (1981) and Adler (1985) it is controversial if firsthand observable talent or other factors like past consumption and popularity influence stardom. This article investigates the emergence of superstars in German soccer. We...

Using representative and geocoded data from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) and the Swiss Business Census, we estimate the effect of sports activity on health. OLS models show that sports activity significantly decreases overweight, sleeping problems, headaches, back problems, and perceived...