This paper estimates the intangible benefits of a two sports facilities in Columbus, Ohio on residential property values. We estimate a spatial hedonic model that avoids biased and inconsistent estimates in the presence of uncorrected spatial autocorrelation. The results suggest that the presence of sports facilities in Columbus have a significant positive distance-decaying effect on surroundin...

In literature, analyses can be found of the competitiveness of international tourist destinations, based on tourist satisfaction with different attributes. However, most of these analyses do not use one single measure to make a global assessment, which makes it difficult to compare destinations. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, some alternatives that can be used as a synthetic index of ...

The paper develops a quality adjusted professional sports franchise price index for North America based on a repeat sale method. This index reflects trends in the general price of sports franchises holding local market, facility, and team characteristics constant. The price index exhibits considerable volatility but no upward trend over time, unlike previous quality adjusted price indexes based...

In equilibrium play of a two-round tournament, we find that underdogs exert more effort in the opening round whereas favorites save more effort for the final. Ability differences are therefore compressed in the opening round so upsets are more likely and amplified in the final so blowouts are more likely. Measures that reduce the need to strategically allocate effort make for a more exciting fi...

This paper empirically investigates three hypotheses regarding biases of National Basketball Association (NBA) referees. Using a sample of 28,388 quarter-level observations from six seasons, we find that referees make calls that favor home teams, teams losing during games, and teams losing in playoff series. All three biases are likely to increase league revenues. In order to distinguish betwee...

The economics literature has long been divided regarding whether competing sports teams can achieve the same, efficient allocation of playing skills that a revenue-maximizing league monopolist would choose despite the external effects the teams impose on each other in their pursuit of athletic talent. In this article an explicit consideration of the arbitrage incentives that underlie the market...

This paper develops a contest model of a professional sports league in which clubs maximize a weighted sum of profits and wins (utility maximization). The model analyzes how more win-orientated behavior of certain clubs affects talent investments, competitive balance and club profits. Moreover, in contrast to traditional models, we show that revenue sharing does not always reduce investment inc...

Outcome bias occurs when an evaluator considers ex-post outcomes when judging whether a choice was correct, ex-ante. We formalize this cognitive bias in a simple model of distorted Bayesian updating. We then examine strategy changes made by professional football coaches. We find they are more likely to revise their strategy after a loss than a win — even for narrow losses, which are uninformati...

Professional sports teams receive large public subsidies for new facility construction. Empirical research suggests that these subsidies cannot be justified by tangible or intangible economic benefits. We develop a model of bargaining between local governments and teams over subsidies that includes league expansion decisions. The model features loss aversion by fans that captures lost utility w...

I exploit a major structural change that has occurred in world soccer to study the impact of incentives on outcomes in a strategic setting. A game-theoretic model is developed that captures some essential strategic elements of soccer vis-à-vis the number of points awarded to a win. The observable implications of the model are tested using a large data set that spans 30 years and 35 countries. T...