The link between team payroll and competitive balance plays a central role in the theory of team sports but is seldom investigated empirically. This paper uses data on team payrolls in Major League Baseball between 1980 and 2000 to examine the link and implements Granger causality tests to...

Conventional wisdom has it that the public share of stadium and arena construction costs has been falling in recent years. Many have attributed this perceived decrease in part to the emergence of the academic literature in the 1990s, finding that one cannot expect that a new team or sport...

This comprehensive Handbook provides a survey of all the major research areas in sports economics written by almost all of the active researchers in this field. It offers not only an accessible insight into the major findings of the literature but also presents some of the world’s...

From the Olympics to the World Cup, mega sporting events are a source of enjoyment for tens of thousands of people, but can also be a source of intense debate and controversy. This insightful Handbook addresses a number of central questions, including: How are host cities selected and under what...

Among the central arguments of the bestselling book and movie Moneyball was the allegation that the labor market for baseball players was inefficient in 2002. At that time, Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics used observations made by statistical analysts to exploit this market inefficiency,...