The tourism industry has traditionally been the leading sector of economy Georgian Black Sea resort Batumi for many decades and is currently experiencing rapid growth. This trend accompanied by an increase in investment activities constructions rental accommodations. Developers are focusing on promoting their rooms apartments, positioning them as a source long-term income, while potential priva...

This paper considers racial discrimination in the market for Major League Baseball rookie cards. Merging data from four sources to form a panel containing 6,026 cards released between 1986 and 1993, we explore the determinants of card values in certain and uncertain environments. Our results indicate black players carry a 15 percent premium at initial release, that race effects are not present ...

Performance in Mixed-Sex and Single-Sex Tournaments: What We Can Learn from Speedboat Races in Japan In speedboat racing in Japan, women racers participate and compete in races under the same conditions as men, and all individuals are randomly assigned to mixed-gender or single-gender groups for each race. In this paper we use a sample of over 140,000 observations of individual-level racing rec...

In this paper we examine how casino gambling revenues differ from other major tax revenues in growth and variability. We estimate the long-run and short-run income elasticities using state-level casino revenue and state, regional and national income. Our empirical analysis includes eleven states that have significant casino gambling. To estimate income elasticities, we run separate time-series ...

Do Former College Athletes Earn More at Work? A Nonparametric Assessment This paper investigates how students’ collegiate athletic participation affects their subsequent labor market success. It uses newly developed distributional tests to establish that the wage distribution of former college athletes is significantly different from non-athletes and that athletic participation is a significant...

In sport and education contexts, children are divided into age-groups which are arbitrary constructions based on the admission dates. This age-group system is thought to determine differences in maturity between pupils within the same group, that is, relative age (RA). In turn, these within-age-group maturity differences produce performance gaps, that is, relative age effects (RAE), which might...

Fatigue and Team Performance in Soccer: Evidence from the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship We investigate the role of fatigue in soccer (football). Although this issue is important for the “productivity” of players and the optimal organization of national and international championships, empirical evidence is lacking. We use data on all the matches played by national teams in a...

Sabotage in Tournaments: Evidence from a Natural Experiment Many tournaments are plagued by sabotage among competitors. Typically, sabotage is welfare-reducing, but from an individual’s perspective an attractive alternative to exerting positive effort. Yet, given its illegal and often immoral nature, sabotage is typically hidden, making it difficult to assess its extent and its victims. Therefo...

The continued expansion of the casino industry has caused increasing concern regarding the cannibalization of other industries, and in particular, state lotteries. For example, Maryland Lottery sales flattened shortly after casinos began opening in the state. Although previous papers have found that casinos and lotteries have a negative relationship with each other, no previous research has ana...

Empirical evidence about the relationship between legal gambling and crime is mixed; some studies find that legalized gambling increases crime and others find no relationship between legalized gambling and crime, controlling for other factors like hotels. We develop a utility maximizing model of time spent in legal work, crime, and leisure and use this model to understand the relationship betwe...