This study investigates determinants of revenue in North America's four major professional sports leagues. Estimates reveal that revenue is positively associated with on-field success in baseball (MLB), basketball (NBA), and hockey (NHL), but not in football (NFL). The returns to winning are not...

Sports teams frequently fire and hire managers when they experience losing. However, determining managerial responsibility for player performance is difficult to measure. This study examines how major-league baseball players perform under different managers and estimates that managers have...

Most US states have adopted movie production incentives with the intention to stimulate state economic growth through film industry investment and related economic activity. Previous cross-state studies of film incentives have not identified a stimulus effect; however, the zero-sum nature of...

During the early days of professional baseball, the dominant major leagues imposed a “reserve clause” designed to limit player wages by restricting competition for labor. Entry into the market by rival leagues challenged the incumbent monopsony cartel's ability to restrict compensation....

A unique aspect of Major League Soccer (MLS) among professional sports leagues is that it operates with a single-entity ownership structure in which teams are managed by a group of co-investors rather than individual team owners in a joint venture. Revenue-sharing from a common pool raises the...

Standard neoclassical principal-agent theory predicts that stricter monitoring should reduce employee shirking from principal desires; however, recent analyses indicate that social aspects of principal-agent relationships may result in monitoring “crowding out” disciplinary effects. From...

Local governments often justify subsidizing sports stadiums as economic development projects that have positive returns on investment. If this is true, economic and quality-of-life spillovers that are capitalized in local property values ought to generate additional tax revenue for host...

Though most studies find that sports stadiums are not strong drivers of economic activity in metropolitan areas, localized development effects may be sufficient to justify public subsidies for a host municipality if circumstances are favorable. This analysis examines the economic ramifications...

Local government funding of sports stadiums is frequently justified as stimulating economic activity despite consensus contrary findings in the academic literature. Though some studies have identified positive neighborhood effects from stadiums on nearby residential property, scant research...

"Past studies have found a positive correlation between the use of the designated hitter in baseball and hit batters, but the reason for this is debatable. Using a new micro-level data set of individual plate appearances, we control for detailed cost-benefit attributes that affect the decision...