Abstract
The economic analysis of professional sport proceeds from the uncertainty of outcome and competitive balance. Members of sports leagues seek to restrain economic competition and claim that they need to do so in order to make contests more attractive. In 1956 Rottenberg analysed this ‘competitive balance defence’, arguing that the reserve clause would not have an effect on the distribution of playing talent in a league, since players would migrate to teams where their economic return was highest, regardless of whether the club or the player owned the right to the revenue stream.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Coase, R. 1960. The problem of social cost. Journal of Law and Economics 3: 1–44.
Ehrenberg, R., and M. Bognanno. 1990. Do tournaments have incentive effects? Journal of Political Economy 98: 1307–1324.
El-Hodiri, M., and J. Quirk. 1971. An economic model of a professional sports league. Journal of Political Economy 79: 1302–1319.
Flynn, M., and R. Gilbert. 2001. An analysis of professional sports leagues as joint ventures. Economic Journal 111: F27–F46.
Fort, R., and J. Quirk. 1995. Cross subsidization, incentives and outcomes in professional team sports leagues. Journal of Economic Literature 33: 1265–1299.
Hoehn, T., and S. Szymanski. 1999. The Americanization of European football. Economic Policy 28: 205–240.
Jones, J. 1969. The economics of the National Hockey League. Canadian Journal of Economics 2: 1–20.
Késenne, S. 2000. Revenue sharing and competitive balance in professional team sports. Journal of Sports Economics 1: 56–65.
Nardinelli, C., and C. Simon. 1990. Customer racial discrimination in the market for memorabilia: The case of baseball. Quarterly Journal of Economics 105: 575–596.
Neale, W. 1964. The peculiar economics of professional sports. Quarterly Journal of Economics 78: 1–14.
Rottenberg, S. 1956. The baseball players’ market. Journal of Political Economy 64: 242–258.
Scully, G. 1974. Pay and performance in major league baseball. American Economic Review 64: 915–930.
Schmidt, M., and D. Berri. 2004. The impact of labor strikes on consumer demand: An application to professional sports. American Economic Review 94: 344–357.
Siegfried, J., and A. Zimbalist. 2000. The economics of sports facilities and their communities. Journal of Economic Perspectives 14(3): 95–114.
Sloane, P. 1971. The economics of professional football: The football club as a utility maximiser. Scottish Journal of Political Economy 17(2): 121–146.
Szymanski, S. 2003. The economic design of sporting contests. Journal of Economic Literature 41: 1137–1187.
Szymanski, S., and A. Zimbalist. 2005. National pastime: How Americans play baseball and the rest of the world plays soccer. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1999. Service annual survey: Current business reports Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. Online. Available at http://www.census.gov/prod/2000pubs/bs98.pdf. Accessed 12 Aug 2005.
Vrooman, J. 1995. A general theory of professional sports leagues. Southern Economic Journal 61: 971–990.
Zimbalist, A. 1992. Salaries and performance in major league baseball. In Diamonds are forever: The business of baseball, ed. P. Sommers. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Szymanski, S., Zimbalist, A. (2018). Sports, Economics of. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2323
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2323
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences