In an e¤ort to stimulate more attractive football, the international football association FIFA, has introduced several new rules over the past decades. One of the most recent rule change is the introduction of the ”sudden death” or ”golden goal” rule for games going into overtime. This paper analyses under which conditions, if any, the introduction of the sudden death rule improves the attracti...

Most economists view the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as a cartel. We investigate the dynamic strategic interaction among NCAA members in a cartel model with incomplete information focused on the strategic behavior induced by self-monitored enforcement of recruiting rules. Empirical results from a panel Probit model strongly support the predictions of the model. Lagged winnin...

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 ...

In an e¤ort to stimulate a more exciting and entertaining style of play, the National Hockey Association (NHL) changed the rewards associated with the results of overtime games. Under the new rules, teams tied at the end of regulation both receive a single point regardless of the outcome in overtime. A team scoring in the sudden-death 5-minute overtime period would earn an additional point. Pri...

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...

Technological innovations in inventory, logistics, and sales give grocery chain stores a profitability advantage over old-fashioned local stores. With chain stores advancing, local store incumbents gradually exit. Two questions concerning this creative destruction process are central to competition policy. How do chain stores make entry decisions? How does a chain store’s entry impact incumbent...

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...