Articles in this issue:

• Employment Effects of the Olympic Games in Atlanta 1996 Reconsidered, pp. 95-111

  Arne Feddersen

  Wolfgang Maennig

  This paper investigates the regional economic impact of the 1996 Olympic Games in Georgia. It questions the findings of Hotchkiss, Moore, and Zobay (2003), who identify significant positive effects of the Olympics on employment in Georgia/USA by first challenging their approach that used a level shift model with no trend inclusion. Second, the original trend regressions are modified to capture spline trend shifts. Third, a nonparametric identification strategy using complex continuous treatment measures extends the original study. After controlling for the two concerns and extending the...Read more

• The Monetary Value of Competitive Balance for Sport Consumers: A Stated Preference Approach to European Professional Football, pp. 112-123

  Tim Pawlowski

  Oliver Budzinski

  Ever since the pioneering work of Rottenberg (1956) and Neale (1964), the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH) has played a major role in the economic analysis of professional sport leagues. However, decades of empirical research have not been successful in establishing clear evidence for the importance of competitive balance (CB) for attendance or TV viewers in European professional football. In order to find possible reasons for the gap between the UOH and (the lack of) its empirical validation, our paper adopts a stated preference approach focused on the fans’ perception of CB and...Read more

• No Pain, No Gain? Effort and Productivity in Professional Soccer, pp. 124-139

  Pamela Wicker

  Joachim Prinz

  Daniel Weimar

  Christian Deutscher

  Thorsten Upmann

  Several determinants of player values like productivity and human capital have been investigated in previous research; however, the influence of individual effort has been neglected. This study assumes that effort could be a signaling device and analyzes the effect of effort on market values of soccer players. Secondary data on player statistics and market values from the 2011/2012 season and the first half of the 2012/2013 season of the German Bundesliga were collected (n=877). Technical innovations that record routes and running distances in soccer allow using total running distance and...Read more

• An Examination of the Effects of the Recent Economic Crisis on Major League Baseball Attendance Demand, pp. 140-156

  Sungil Hong

  Michael Mondello

  Dennis Coates

  This paper investigates the effects of the recent economic crisis on Major League Baseball (MLB) attendance during the 2008 and 2009 seasons, adopting the composite index of coincident indicators released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to capture the impact of economic circumstances. Major advantages of the coincident indexes are the ability to specify monthly changes in state economic conditions, as well as combining the information from several economic indicators. The estimates for the coincident indicators suggest the economic downturn drove a fall in attendance of about 6...Read more

• Taxing the Opposition: Cactus League Attendance and the Efficiency of the ‘Cubs Tax’, pp. 157-170

  Michael C. Davis

  Craig Palsson

  Joseph Price

  In 2010, a plan to finance a new spring training stadium for the Cubs through a ticket surcharge on all games in the Cactus League was proposed. We find that the Cubs increase attendance when they are the away team by about 37%. Thus, the surcharge would be economically justified as long as the price elasticity of tickets is less than 0.32, which many prior studies find to be the case. This tax provides one of the few examples in which the cost of a subsidized stadium would be born primarily by the group that benefits the most from the arrival of the subsidized team.Read more