The authors investigate the salary returns to the ability to play association football (soccer) with both feet. The majority of footballers are predominantly right footed. Using two data sets, a cross section of footballers in the five main European leagues and a panel of players in the German...

Football hooliganism, defined as episodes of crowd trouble inside and outside football stadiums on match days, is commonly perceived to have adverse effects on the sport. We are especially interested in the effects of football-related fan violence on a club’s potential for generating...

Until recently, the position of quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) was not an option for Black athletes. Today, many teams use Black quarterbacks, a development that might suggest race is no longer relevant when it comes to the evaluation of signal callers in the NFL. By modeling...

This articles uses an attendance demand model with panel data on more than 4,000 games to examine economic problems of fixture congestion in English Football League schedules. We find that televised, midweek Champions League matches involving English Premier League clubs have substantial adverse...

Financial distress is not an uncommon occurrence in English football. The number of clubs falling into financial difficulties has escalated, yet this coincides with an era when the revenues accrued to English football have reached unprecedented levels. This article examines the finances of the...

This article investigates wage determination among professional soccer players appearing in the Italian league. Given the popularity of "top" soccer players, the relationship between individual productivity and pay can lead to "superstar" effects. In that context, the marginal revenue product of...

A growing literature examines adverse behavior as unintended consequences of incentives. We test Lazear's hypothesis that states that if rewards were dependent solely on relative performance then an increase in rewards would induce agents to engage in sabotage activity to reduce rivals' output....

Since the 1960s, increasing numbers of football players from Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia have been migrating to the top leagues in Western Europe (England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain). This development has been massively fostered by the ``Bosman ruling'' of the...

The purpose of this article is to describe the financial situation and the development of club finances of the German “Bundesligaâ€. Using data provided by the football association and data collected from a number of different sources we find that the majority of the teams are...

A large body of literature documents the existence of a considerable and persistent gender gap in competitiveness. Using longitudinal data from ultramarathon running covering the period 2005-2009, I first confirm the findings of most previous studies by demonstrating that on average the...