price distortions in agriculture and their effects an international comparison the central thesis of this paper is that agricultural pricing policies pursued by developing countries produce effects which are diametrically opposite to those produced by the pricing policies of many developed countries and that the policies of both are costly in terms of global welfare in general the agricultural sector in developing countries is heavily taxed while that in the developed countries receives substantial price protection the effects of agricultural price distortions on output consumption trade and rural employment are estimated for nine countries in addition the effects of price distortions on the distribution of income between producers and consumers on government revenue and foreign exchange and the net social losses of the policies are calculated the results indicate that there are large income transfers and impacts on migration from the rural to the urban sector in developing countries and from the urban to the rural sector in developed economies

habits costly investment and current account dynamics abstract we analyze the current account dynamics for a small country model with habit forming consumers and costly investment the model has several empirical and policy implications i it is consistent with stylized facts regarding the effects of productivity shocks and increases in fiscal spending and regarding the savings investment co movement ii the long run effect of a temporary shock on net foreign assets is often opposite to that of a permanent shock iii under strong habit persistence the welfare dynamics are sluggish so that a beneficial tax financed fiscal policy may have a harmful hangover effect on welfare

the shadow wage rate theory and application abstract this paper investigates the relationship between recent theoretical work on the shadow wage rate in a tax distorted economy and the border price equivalent methods recommended by little and mirrlees and widely used in project appraisal manuals and empirical applications

demand for football and intramatch winning probability an essay on the glorious uncertainty of sports the aims of this study are i to identify the main determinants of the demand for french premiere division football matches using all matches played during the 1997 1998 season ii to estimate a team specific probability of success and iii to propose an updating process for the intramatch winning probability the methodology is tested empirically over an out of sample data set using matches of the 1998 1999 season the results show that football appears to be an inferior product affected by both socio economic and football variables and that the main football variables have only a tenuous explanatory power concerning the final outcome of a given match

agency relationships in family firms theory and evidence does owner management necessarily eliminate the agency costs of ownership drawing on agency literature and on the economic theory of the household we argue that private ownership and owner management expose privately held owner managed firms to agency threats ignored by jensen s and meckling s 1976 agency model private ownership and owner management not only reduce the effectiveness of external control mechanisms they also expose firms to a self control problem created by incentives that cause owners to take actions which harm themselves as well as those around them jensen 1994 p 43 thus shareholders have incentive to invest resources in curbing both managerialand owner opportunism we extend this thesis to the domain of the family firm after developing hypotheses which describe how family dynamics and specifically altruism exacerbate agency problems experienced by these privately held owner managed firms we use data obtained from a large scale survey of family businesses to field test our hypotheses and find evidence which suggests support for our proposed theory finally we discuss the implications of our theory for research on family and other types of privately held owner managed firms

a general multiple distributed lag framework for estimating the dynamic effects of promotions game attendance resulting from ticket sales is the single largest revenue stream for major league baseball mlb teams we propose a general multiple distributed lag framework following the koyck family of models for estimating mlb attendance drivers and focus specifically on the differential direct and carryover effects of in game promotions by setting various model constraints the proposed framework incorporates different forms of serial correlation and promotion specific dynamic effects using information model selection heuristics we select an optimal model of attendance drivers for the pittsburgh pirates 2010 2012 mlb seasons we demonstrate that our newly proposed model with an unrestricted serial correlation structure performs best we find that although kids promotions have the highest direct effect on attendance giveaway and entertainment promotions have substantial carryover effects and the largest total effects we use our results to optimize the pirates promotional schedule and find that a reallocation of resources across promotional categories can increase profits between 39 and 88 data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2013 1856 this paper was accepted by eric bradlow special issue on business analytics

demand for sport this article reviews international literature on the demand for professional sport the first part presents a conceptual framework for understanding the sources and determinants of the demand for professional sporting contests the second part reviews empirical evidence on key determinants of attendance at sporting events and on other sources of demand such as broadcasting sponsorship and merchandising the review concludes that there is still much to be learned about demand for professional sport and that there are no simple lessons to be drawn from existing literature but important messages do emerge from studies of demand for attendance with regard to effects of uncertainty of outcome quality of contest and quality of viewing copyright 2003 oxford university press

football spectator no show behaviour in the german bundesliga despite an extensive literature on stadium attendance demand our understanding of those factors shaping spectator no show behaviour is rudimentary at best here we explore such behaviour by using

the impact of the 1981 and 1994 1995 strikes on major league baseball attendance a time series analysis protracted labour disputes in professional team sports have become increasingly common in the past 30 years although each of the four major professional team sports in the usa have experienced episodes of labour strife major league baseball has the longest and most frequent experience with labour management conflict fans and the media claim with each incident permanent harm is done to baseball s standing as the national pastime the purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether such claims can be supported by the empirical evidence utilizing time series analysis aggregate attendance at professional baseball games is examined the evidence presented suggests that although the most protracted periods of labour discord had short term impacts on attendance there is no empirical evidence that these exogenous shocks had any long term effects

the demand for standing and seated viewing accommodation in the english football league using match attendance data collected from a postal survey of football league clubs separate demand equations are estimated for standing and seated viewing accommodation some significant differences between attendance patterns for the two types of accommodation are identified current form the championship significance of the match and a geographical distance variable are found to be important determinants of standing attendance while the club s historical record is of particular importance for seated attendance the paper also discusses the implications of the results in view of the current moves towards the conversion of stadia to all seated accommodation

cost benefit analysis and the european union cohesion fund on the social cost of capital and labour florio m 2006 cost benefit analysis and the european union cohesion fund on the social cost of capital and labour regional studies 40 211 224 cost benefit analysis is a formal regulatory requirement for the evaluation of cohesion fund projects it requires the calculation of shadow prices observed prices in less developed european union regions do not reflect the social opportunity cost of labour and capital because of market failures and policy constraints the paper discusses simple rules for the calculation of financial and economic discount rates and of shadow wages i e the opportunity costs of capital and labour in the context of the appraisal of infrastructure projects part financed under the cohesion fund it is argued that for the 2007 13 programming period the european commission should adopt a unique financial discount rate of 3 5 in real terms social discount rates of 5 5 for the convergence regions and 3 5 for competitiveness regions and a region specific shadow wage rate co

evaluating changes in league structure the reorganization of the scottish football league this article investigates the relationship between league structure and the demand for professional team sport using data from the scottish football league sfl 1971 to 1980 the sfl was restructured in 1975 and thus provides an excellent opportunity for the empirical analysis of the influence of league structure the general channels by which league structure affects demand are explored estimates are made of the impact on individual clubs by predicting what attendances would have been in the absence of the league reorganization finally the distribution of attendances across clubs is examined for evidence of the influence of league structure

should nfl blackouts be banned in this paper the authors examine the economic and policy implications of the national football league nfl blackout rule a league rule that prohibits local television broadcast of games that are not sold out at least 72 hours prior to game time the foundation for understanding and assessing the impact of the blackout rule is an analysis of attendance using data on games during the 1996 1997 national football league season expanding on previous research three separate components of attendance season ticket sales game day ticket sales and game day noshows are examined in detail accounting for the endogeneity of key variables tobit and probit analyses are used to estimate and predict individual game attendance these empirical estimates are then used as a vehicle to assess the implications of game day blackouts and the potential for public policy intervention more specifically the authors begin by estimating the impact of the blackout on game day attendance using these estimates they asses

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

the demand for semi pro league football in malaysia 1989 91 a panel data approach this article arguments the literature on the demand for professional team sports by estimating a demand function for attendance at home matches in the malaysian semi pro football league mspfl between 1989 and 1991 a single equation demand attendance function based on a pooled cross section and time series panel data set of 399 games is estimated by ordinary least squares a fixed effects dummy variable covariance model and an error components model our findings confirm the importance of market size and championship prospects for the home team but not the visiting team as well as divisional status and star players the first match of the season and derby matches also increased attendance

price knowledge in household demand for utility services a household s decision to acquire price knowledge is endogenous in the demand for utility services and may affect elasticities and consumption levels a simultaneous equation model with endogenous switching is developed to evaluate the effects of price knowledge and other sources of heterogeneity results indicate informed households were more responsive to average and marginal price signals informed households also use less water but this is due to heterogeneity rather than price knowledge controlling for heterogeneity price knowledge actually increases monthly water usage the implications of accounting for differences in price knowledge in utility demand modeling and demand management policy are discussed

the demand for league football a demand equation is estimated for total football league attendances for the period 1948 49 to 1979 80 plausible values are obtained for the elasticities of demand with respect to income and to a price variable which includes the cost of travel to the stadium the values imply that football spectating is an inferior good with a low price elasticity equations are also estimated for the league s separate divisions the implications of the results for the football league clubs are discussed

does social capital reduce crime abstract we investigate the effects of civic norms and associational networks on crime rates civic norms may attach guilt and shame to criminal behavior thus increasing its opportunity cost associational networks may increase returns to noncriminal activities and raise detection probabilities but they may also work as communication channels for criminals and may offer official cover to criminal activities the empirical assessment of these effects poses serious problems of endogeneity omitted variables measurement error and spatial correlation italy s great variance in social and economic characteristics its homogeneity in policies and institutions and the availability of historical data on social capital in its regions allow us to minimize the first two problems to tackle the last two problems we use report rate adjusted crime rates and estimate a spatial lag model we find that both civic norms and associational networks have a negative and significant effect on property crimes across italia

the brazilian soccer championship an efficiency analysis this article analyses the top brazilian football league from 2003 to 2011 by estimating a cost function and using a stochastic frontier model among the covariates the number of fans per club and club remoteness is taken into account the brazilian clubs are then ranked according to their technical efficiency during the 2000 2011 period based on the results the policy implication is presented and the economic implications arising from the study are also considered

the demand for football in the regions of england and wales dobson s m and goddard j a 1996 the demand for football in the regions of england and wales reg studies 30 443 453 this paper investigates the determinants of the demand for football in the regions of england and wales using annual time series data over a 37 year period we use a dynamic error correction model to identify economic and football specific factors which determine attendances in the short run and long run the short run influences on demand are performance admission price and goal scoring performance and the unemployment rate are identified as significant long run determinants of attendance although the relationship between attendance share and performance seems to exhibit a strong regional dimension we find only weak evidence of regional variation in the coefficients of the attendance model itself dobson s m et goddard j a 1996 la demande de football aux regions de l angleterre et des pays de galles reg studies 30 443 453 cet article examine les determinants de la de

the economic design of sporting contests what is the optimal number of entrants in a race or the optimal number of teams in a baseball league what is the optimal structure of prizes for a golf tournament or degree of revenue sharing for a football championship how evenly balanced should the competing teams be in the nascar or formula one championships what is the maximum number of entrants per nation to the olympic games that should be permitted what quota of qualifying teams to the soccer world cup should be allocated to the developing nations

public production and shadow pricing in a model of disequilibrium in labor and capital markets abstract this paper develops second best rules for public investment and employment in various regimes of disequilibrium on the capital and the labour markets the model used is very simple so as to imply rules which can easily be interpreted and contrasted with the current literature on the subject another issue considered is that of possible changes of regimes within a process of welfare improvement involving adjustments in the public production plan it is dealt with through a numerical example which points out that such changes can indeed occur

the demand for english league football a club level analysis a demand equation is estimated for 19 large urban based english football league clubs over the period 1962 3 to 1991 2 in order to analyse the economic determinants of club attendances while controlling for football specific factors attendances are measured with and without correction for admission of season ticket holders using an error correction specification to model attendances it is shown that both adjusted and unadjusted attendances respond to real ticket prices in the long run in 17 and 18 clubs respectively the price elasticity is typically larger for adjusted attendances suggesting that casual spectators are more price sensitive than season ticket holders among football specific factors league position goals scored and promotion and relegation between the divisions are all important determinants of attendance patterns

do inequality unemployment and deterrence affect crime over the long run abstractdo inequality unemployment and deterrence affect crime over the long run regional studies this paper investigates the long run relationship between crime inequality unemployment and deterrence using us state level data from 1978 to 2013 the novelty is to use non stationary panels with a factor structure the results show that 1 a crime theoretical model fits the long run relationship well 2 income inequality and unemployment have a positive impact on crime whereas that of deterrence is negative 3 the effect of income inequality on crime is larger when inequality is measured on a wider population proportion and 4 property crime is generally highly sensitive to the deterrence effect of police

inequality among equals embedding market and authority in league sports in league sports the regulatory authority of leagues is thought to counter market pressures that would otherwise concentrate player talent in smsas with the largest market potential the presumed opposition between authority and markets is not supported by league histories in the four major team sports these histories show that contrary to expectations market potential has the greatest influence on winning when league authority is formally strongest market potential has no influence on performance when league authority is opposed by antitrust law player unions rival leagues or league members to explain this anomaly authority and market relations must both be seen as embedded within the multiplex relations among team owners these relations changed dramatically with the rise of national audiences in the past three decades inequality among equals replaced inequality among unequals as the support of a rootless national audience replaced rooted and unequal local audiences altering the opportunity

regional heterogeneity migration and shadow prices abstract this paper deals with some spatial influences on social scarcities first the existence of regional goods which usually implies differences in consumer prices second differences in preferences across locations and third a rigid wage in one region which may result in ex post inequalities among migrants who were identical ex ante it is shown that in general the shadow wage depends on regional differences in the cost of living and preferences and that the effect of a shift from ex ante to ex post social welfare on the shadow wage is unclear in this connection the assumption that the marginal product of labor is locally constant proves to be much stronger than is commonly recognized

a structural model of crime and inequality in colombia economic theory suggests that inequality should influence crime positively yet the evidence in favor of that hypothesis is weak pure cross sectional analyses show significant positive effects but cannot control for fixed effects time series and panel data point to a variety of results but few turn out being significant the hypothesis maintained in this paper is that it is a specific part of the distribution rather than the overall distribution as summarized by conventional inequality measures that is most likely to influence the rate of property crime in a given society using a simple theoretical model and panel data in seven colombian cities over a fifteen year period a structural model is proposed that permits identifying the precise segment of the population whose relative income best explains time changes in crime jel k42 d63 o15

the economics of price scissors reply the question of how the funds required for the capital accumulation associated with industrialization are to be raised has a long history since the industrial sector is relatively small in the early stages of industrialization there has been a presumption that funds must primarily come fromi the agricultural sector the issue has been how best to extract these funds what are the effects of such a resource transfer what is the nature of the limits on the amounts to be extracted and whether in this process it is desirable or necessary to squeeze simultaneously the urban proletariat in our 1984 paper we presented a simple model of a closed socialist economy in which the instruments at the disposal of the government are the terms of trade the relative price of the agricultural good in terms of the industrial good and the industrial wage which we believe sheds some light on these questions particularly in the context of the soviet industrialization debate this model is part of a larger research program in which we have examined similar questions in the context of economnies under a variety of trade regimes with a variety of institutional structures with and without heterogeneity among individuals within a sector with and without the disaggregation of commodities produced in each of the two sectors with and without migration where the government has at its disposal other policy instruments where wages in the urban sector are determined in a variety of ways and in which wages and prices may affect the productivity of workers the reason for examining a variety of economic structures is obvious as the past experience of economic development has shown there is an enormous diversity in the salient features of developing countries and in the set of policy instruments that a government can or cannot employ among our objectives have been i to examine a range of models emphasizing diflerent sets of structural features in part to ascertain which features are central to answering the questions at hand and ii to develop general reduced form relationships to describe specific parts of the economy for instance to represent the migration mechanism and the urban wage determination and to show that the central results depend only on the properties of these reduced form relationships the issues raised by ake blomqvist and michael carter in their comments 1986 are primarily interpretative they contend that our simple model of a socialist economy is not an appropriate vehicle for examining certain propositions which the soviet economist evgeny preobrazhensky advanced during the soviet debate instead carter argues for an open economy specification and for a particular type of wage productivity effect blomqvist on the other hand favors a specification in which the government can set different prices in two sectors we have referred to the problem of analyzing differential prices or taxes in the two sectors as that of urban rural pricing in contrast to the price scissors problem where both sectors face the same prices as the commentators are aware we have analyzed these and more general specifications in our 1985a and 1983 papers respectively since it is not possible to present a full analysis within this short reply we briefly describe some of the qualitative features of price scissors within a simple framework so that one can see certain implications of alternative assumptions we then turn to the more doctrinal and yale university new haven ct 06520 and princeton university princeton nj 08544 respectively see our studies 1983 1984 1985a b c 1986 an empirical framework for analyzing urban rural pricing issues in a multiperson multicommodity context was developed in sah 1982 related models have been employed by avishay braverman et al 1984 and others

sport event attendance as a function of education evidence from the uk abstractthis article studies the role of education in the decision to attend sporting events the overall objective is to verify whether more educated individuals are more likely to go to sports events than their less educated counterparts if education socializes persons to focus on sports it would then partially offset negative alternatives such as alcohol drug abuse and unlawful behaviours creating a positive externality sport events consumption is extensive highlighting the potential economic importance of the sports education externality to establish the role of education in sport attendance this article applies a probabilistic linear regression model to data from the uk the econometric formulation associates sport event attendance in the left hand side with education in the right hand side while controlling for the socioeconomic variables that are known to affect a consumer s decision to go to a sport event gender age income employment status children marital status and geographical

bargaining in the transfer market theory and evidence this paper examines the transfer market for association football players as operated in the english football league using transfer data for the 1990 91 season after describing the purposes and procedures involved in the transfer system together with the motives of the participants we apply two person bargaining theory to analyse the determination of transfer fees the data and estimation procedures are explained and the results reported and interpreted our analysis suggests that the nash bargaining theory captures the salient features of the bargaining process in the footballer s transfer market

what causes violent crime this study uses panel data of intentional homicide and robbery rates for a sample of developed and developing countries for the period 1970 1994 based on information from the united nations world crime surveys to analyze the determinants of national crime rates both across countries and over time a simple model of the incentives to commit crimes is proposed which explicitly considers possible causes of the persistence of crime over time criminal inertia a panel data based gmm methodology is used to estimate a dynamic model of national crime rates this estimator controls for unobserved country speci ce ects the joint endogeneity of some of the explanatory variables and the existence of some types of measurement errors a icting the crime data the results showthat increases in income inequality raise crime rates crime tends to be countercyclical and criminal inertia is signi cant 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

strong and weak ties in employment and crime this paper analyzes the interplay between social structure and information exchange in two competing activities crime and labor we consider a dynamic model in which individuals belong to mutually exclusive two person groups referred to as dyads there are multiple equilibria if jobs are badly paid and or crime is profitable unemployment benefits have to be low enough to prevent workers for staying too long in the unemployment status because they are vulnerable to crime activities if instead jobs are well paid and or crime is not profitable unemployment benefits have to be high enough to induce workers to stay unemployed rather to commit crime because they are less vulnerable to crime activities also in segregated neighborhoods characterized by high interactions between peers a policy only based on punishment and arrest will not be efficient in reducing crime it has to be accompanied by other types of policies that take into account social interactions

illicit drug use and labour market achievement evidence from the uk this study using data from the british crime survey bcs examines the effect of drug use on occupational achievement it starts by attempting to overcome the identification problem that results from the limited set of drug use questions presented in the bcs taking this into account and allowing for the endogeneity of drug use in equations for unemployment and labour market outcomes that a mild positive association with soft drugs and occupational achievement is observed that diminishes with age this relationship holds for males but not for females in contrast it is also found that past use of hard drugs significantly increases the likelihood of current unemployment although it appears to be unrelated to occupational success conditional on achieving employment

neighbourhood income inequality and property crime this paper examines the relationship between income inequality and property crime using census block group data from three us cities nashville tn portland or and tucson az this paper is one o

a welfare economic analysis of labor market policies in the harris todaro model this paper presents a welfare economic analysis of the benefits of various labor market policies in the harris todaro labor market model the policies considered are a policy of modern sector job creation which i call modern sector enlargement msenl a policy of rural development which i call traditional sector enrichment tsenr and a policy of wage limitation in the urban economy which i call modern sector wage restraint mswr first i analyze the inequality effects of these policies i then perform two welfare economic analyses the first based on summary measures of labor market conditions total labor earnings unemployment inequality of labor incomes and poverty rates and the second based on dominance analysis in the labor market in both cases assuming that the costs are borne elsewhere the results of the welfare analyses are compared and it is shown that tsenr unambiguously increases welfare in the labor market using both approaches the other policies yield ambiguous results and no policy is unambiguously welfare decreasing

the social cost of labor and project evaluation a general approach abstract this paper presents a general framework for analyzing shadow wages in ldcs we focus on i the differences between the domestic and international prices ii the equilibrating mechanisms in the economy iii the endogeneity of earnings in industry and agriculture iv the consequences of industrial employment creation on agriculture and v the nature of migration and unemployment we identify those reduced form relationships which are central in determining the shadow wage and use them to obtain general formulae for the shadow wage these formulae can be specialized to alternative technological behavioral and institutional settings this yields many new results concerning the relationship between the shadow wage and the market wage also earlier results on shadow wages are derived as special cases of our formulae

team roster turnover and attendance in major league baseball empirical support is shown for the propositionthat sports fans prefer the composition of their home team to remain the same from season to season controlling for price income population team quality league year the stadium effects the regression results indicate that for each percentage point increase in the turnover of the composition of the team attendance will fall by about 0 7 the implications of this heretofore ignored tendency are briefly discussed

impact of league restructuring on team sport attendances the case of rugby league an econometric analysis of attendances at rugby footbal league matches in england over the period 1966 1990 is presented the major finding is that the move from one to two leagues in 1973 had a substantial impact on attendances teams in the upper league experienced greater attendances ceteris paribuswhilst those in the lower league had reduced attendances

pre and within season attendance forecasting in major league baseball a random forest approach this study explores the forecasting of major league baseball game ticket sales and identifies important attendance predictors by means of random forests that are grown from classification and regre

college football attendance a panel study of the football bowl subdivision panel data with an instrumented real ticket price are used to estimate a regular season game day attendance and per cent of capacity regression equations better team performance whether short term season wins intermediate term bowls games in last 10 years or long term lifetime winning percentage higher undergraduate enrolment traditional rivalries and video coverage increase per cent of capacity used poor weather more rain or cloud cover higher travel costs and larger local population decrease it fan interest wanes as a season progresses but this is offset as a team wins more games games played near a national football league stadium those with conference opponents non fbs opponents and non bcs opponents have lower stadium utilization the substantive results of the analysis do not change when attendance is used as the dependent variable rather than per cent of capacity

broadcasting and sport the broadcasting of sport is heavily regulated our main finding is that common trends and differences in the quality quantity and price of televised sport across europe and usa cannot be adequately explained without reference to policy interventions by national and supranational government and by competition and regulatory authorities these interventions have a significant impact on the organization and governance of sports as well as the structure of broadcasting markets and the conduct of broadcasting companies foreclosure of broadcasting markets through exclusive long term contracts bundling and vertical integration access of viewers to major sporting events and collective selling stand out as the most significant policy issues we conclude by noting a number of policy implications copyright 2003 oxford university press

rational habit formation abstract this paper discusses consumer demand under rational habit formation if consumer tastes change endogenously through habit stocks depending on past consumption the rational consumer will make allowance of the future habit forming effects of current consumption a model with rational habit formation is made formally equivalent to an intertemporal consumer model without habit formation by redefining the cost of consumption and wealth the cost of consumption is obtained by adding the cost of future induced consumption to the rental price of the commodity the extended wealth concept is obtained by subtracting the cost of the initial stocks of habits and the cost of future physically necessary consumption from wealth the paper also investigates the implication of rational habit formation for constructing one period cost of living indices

the duration of the smoking habit i introduction most smokers smoke out of habit once the habit is ended many of smoking s most harmful effects decline rather quickly preventing and ending cigarette addiction is therefore the straightest path toward preventing the health damage done by cigarette smoking consequently the related questions of why people start smoking and why they quit are central to formulating and evaluating effective antismoking policies duration or hazard models are designed to measure the probability of transition between states and are thus ideal for investigating the structural determinants of the transition between addiction and non addiction nevertheless most previous work in the economics literature uses the aggregate smoking participation rate defined as the percentage of people who currently smoke or an individual s probability of participation rather than a hazard rate to measure the attractiveness of habitual smoking this paper models the hazard rates of both starting and quitting the cigarette smoking habit the starting hazard rate is the probability that an individual will start smoking in a given time period conditional on being a nonsmoker until then the quitting hazard rate is the probability of quitting smoking in a given time period conditional on being a smoker since the starting date both of these rates should rise and fall in response to changes in the attractiveness of smoking the two rates will respond differently to different stimuli since the starting hazard reflects the point of view of nonsmokers and the quitting hazard reflects the point of view of smokers hazard or duration models possess several advantages over smoking participation models most obviously smoking participation rates cannot directly distinguish between increased starting rates and decreased quitting rates but the hazard models can also in a participation rate model it is difficult to control for the effect of the duration of the habit whereas duration models are designed specifically to allow for and measure the dependence of the hazard rate on duration another advantage is that the participation rate at any one time will oversample the number of long term smokers relative to those who had a short term habit whereas a duration model is designed to avoid this source of bias one drawback however is that because of their inherent panel nature the data requirements of duration models are somewhat more difficult to satisfy as shall be seen the only previous work in the economics literature that estimates the hazard rate of starting smoking is douglas and hariharan 1994 my paper improves upon douglas and hariharan in at least three important ways first it estimates the hazard rate of quitting smoking as well as that of starting second it takes into account variation in state level regulation third its time varying covariate model allows hazard rates to respond dynamically to changes in cigarette price regulation and information variables the use of time varying covariates is important because it brings the empirical model into much closer accord with theory the decision whether or not to start or quit smoking is an ongoing decision made one day at a time on the basis of current information the hazard of starting is greatest when the cost of the habit appears lowest and its benefit appears highest this comparison of cost and benefit changes through time as price information income and life cycle variables change while douglas and hariharan 1994 used price information from the potential smoker s most vulnerable age on the theory that its marginal effect is greatest at that time the model used in this paper allows each individual s hazard rate to respond to changes in price and public information as they occur the leading theoretical model of the decision to smoke is the rational addiction model of becker and murphy 1988 which assumes that consumers of addictive goods begin smoking only after fully weighing the costs and benefits of the habit

alcoholism work and income this article reports on an empirical analysis of the relationships between alcoholism and income and working we show that the relationships between alcoholism and labor market success have important age or life cycle dimensions we present evidence that alcoholism may affect income more by restricting labor market participation than by affecting the wages of workers finally we demonstrate that the effects of alcoholism on earnings depend on the extent to which one controls for other covariates associated with alcoholism as such we suggest that there may be important indirect as well as direct effects of alcoholism on labor market success

dyed in the wool an empirical note on fan loyalty this article attempts to investigate empirically the strength of intracity football club support and seeks to test the commonly held belief among the sports community that supporters will not switch allegiance between city rivals very readily to test this phenomenon data on the attendances of five english and two italian city rival clubs is used to conduct a cointegration analysis the results imply that a stable relationship does not exist between the attendance series which throws doubt on the proposition that supporters of a team are unlikely to switch their support to a rival club to test the possibility that this result could be due to fickle supporters ceasing to attend a sensitivity analysis is conducted between attendances and performance

winning games versus winning championships the economics of fan interest and team performance championship prospects as distinct from game winning prospects may contribute to a fan s interest in a particular sports team if so then both season length and the structure of championship playoffs help determine the equilibrium allocation of playing skills across the teams of a league evidence from a regression analysis of team attendance in baseball indicates that ticket demand depends in part on perceived flag winning prospects several patterns in the winning percentages of league leaders in the major u s team sports are consistent with the perspective that championship considerations influence the allocation of playing skills

coaching team production coaching team production the actual function of managers is the subject of much debate using data on more than 3000 male college basketball players their coaches and their skill levels we find a positive and significant relation between our ability to replicate an individual coach s allocation of playing time across players and his winning percentage although this result does not answer the central question of just what it is that managers contribute the results do support the property rights paradigm managers are the employees of workers and more generally sports data can be used to help understand related economic processes where quantifiable measures of inputs and outputs are more costly to obtain what is meant by performance input energy initiative work attitude perspiration rate of exhaustion or output sometimes by inspecting a team member s input activity we can better judge his output effect it is not always the case that watching input activity is the only or best means of detecting measuring or monitoring output effects of each team member but in some cases it is a useful way i introduction a major tenet of the alchian demsetz 1972 representation of the firm is that managers are hired by workers to prevent shirking and malfeasance in their own ranks absent overseers individual workers bear only a fraction of the cost of shirking and hence everyone undersupplies labor relative to its opportunity cost in this world the managerial function is to monitor inputs and meter rewards thereby reducing the incentive to shirk and raising each worker s marginal productivity the more dependence there is in the marginal products of laborers the more important the role of management this view of supervision is simultaneously intuitively pleasing and difficult to quantify this paper investigates the role of management in a setting where indisputably there is team production intercollegiate basketball 1 data on 3012 college basketball players across ten years and sixty five teams are used to replicate one aspect of coaching the allocation of playing time next we attempt to link coaching decisions to winning the goal is to determine if coaches who manage well by our standards are successful section ii motivates the paper in section iii the empirical methodology is detailed the monitoring function is estimated and related to coaching success section iv contains a summary and conclusion ii coaching decisions the essence of team production is interdependence and the inherent immeasurability of marginal productivity across workers however this does not mean that proxies for marginal productivity cannot be developed managers monitor worker inputs and deduce marginal products accordingly of course some inputs are more cheaply quantified than others attitude is hard to measure but heart rate is easy sweat is observed cheaply but workers can feign exhaustion in the famous chinese boatpullers fable the coxswain uses his whip to insure that coolies pull efficiently to persuade each worker to give the appropriate effort 2 mcmanus 1975 341 relates a story told by cheung boats are pulled upstream by a team of coolies prodded by an overseer with a whip an american lady horrified at the sight of the overseer whipping the men as they strained at their harness demanded that something be done about the brutality she was quickly informed those men own the rights to draw boats over this stretch of water and they have hired the overseer and given him his duties here the monitor uses his vision intuition and experience to determine shirking counseling the loafers with his whip but employing subjective observation is just one way to monitor

competition format championship uncertainty and stadium attendance in european football a small league perspective to increase the number of regular season games small football leagues are often organized as quadruple round robin tournaments with teams playing each other four times theoretically however the more games played the less uncertain is the championship race reducing fan interest in the league this article uses data from austria and switzerland to study the relationship between competition format championship uncertainty and attendance demand empirically results suggest that a team still in contention to win the championship positively affects attendance while it is not the specificity of the competition format that per se contributes to less championship uncertainty

the demand for cricket the case of the john player league multiple regression analysis is used to estimate attendance functions 1976 and 1977 for the john player league one of the one day competitions in english top class cricket likely determinants of attendance are grouped according to whether they are economic locational team performance player attraction seasonal and residual preference factors the results suggest implications for the management of the game in respect of pricing strategy scheduling the structure of competition player qualification rules payment scales and television policy

the peculiar externalities of professional team sports 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 marketing and pricing of playing skills indicates that decentralized franchises generally fail to allocate talent efficiently for fans concerned about the championship prospects of their preferred team the popular complaint has merit big city teams win too much jel l83 i introduction twenty years before the end of major league baseball s comprehensive reserve clause which assigned to team owners the exclusive right to market player contracts simon rottenberg 1956 p 255 observed that a market in which freedom is limited by the reserve rule such as that which governs the baseball labor market distributes players among teams about as a free market would the subsequent economics literature has been divided regarding whether the distribution of players under the reserve clause and free agency is not just identical but also efficient my analysis suggests that it is not the typical popular view is that competitive balance is achieved when teams at least over time perform equally well as measured by winning percentage or championship frequency economic analysis suggests instead that if team revenues uniformly reflect fan satisfaction then competitive balance is optimal when talent is allocated so as to maximize revenues for the league as a whole the two notions of competitive balance match only when team markets are of equal size either by coincidence or because of freedom of entry and relocation of team franchises under the prevailing circumstances in which market sizes differ superior on field performance by large market teams does not in itself indicate to economists that the existing level of competitive balance is suboptimal the question of interest is whether the dominance of large market teams is excessive thereby reducing total league revenues the next section reviews the debate about the efficiency consequences that result from the external effects that teams impose on each other through their competition for athletic talent the following sections then establish three key points section iii shows that teams generally fail to achieve the league revenue maximizing allocation of talent when the teams acquire players from an external market with a perfectly elastic supply of playing skills section iv turns to the internal marketing of athletic talent for which quirk and el hodiri 1974 have demonstrated that decentralized franchises reach the same allocation of playing skills as a league revenue maximizing monopolist as long as internally marketed skills sell for a uniform price however the analysis of section iv indicates that the arbitrage process that drives the internal marketing of talent does not lead to a uniform price for playing skills but only to an equilibrium set of bilateral transaction prices between each pair of teams as a result decentralized franchises do not end up with an equal marginal revenue product of playing skills across teams and therefore do not achieve the allocation of talent that a league revenue maximizing monopolist would choose section v examines the nature of the discrepancy between the optimal allocation of talent and the allocation achieved by noncooperative franchises linking fan interest to the championship prospects of the fan s preferred team generates an outcome in which unrestricted competition for playing skills by decentralized franchises results in excessive domination by large market teams whose incremental acquisitions of playing skills impose negative externalities on third party rivals appropriate per unit taxes and or subsidies on playing skills can be structured as a first best policy to address this inefficiency

attendance at australian rules football a panel study the demand for australian rules football is examined using data on attendance at individual matches played between 1981 and 1986 an estimation methodology which is appropriate for a dynamic model with panel data is adopted and it is found that attendance at football is price inelastic and an inferior good the effect of habit in consumption behaviour stadium size uncertainty of outcome and team success are also shown to be important determinants of attendance

performance and revenue in professional league football evidence from granger causality tests using a dataset comprising annual performance measured by final league position and gate revenue for 77 football league clubs which maintained unbroken league membership between 1946 and 1994 the relationship between performance and revenue is investigated using cointegration and causality tests a cointegrating relationship between performance and revenue is established in only 10 cases out of 77 although it is argued that some caution is required in interpreting these results due to the low power of the relevant tests in relatively small samples in granger causality tests more evidence is found of causality running from lagged revenue to current performance than of causality in the opposite direction while the dependence of performance on revenue seems to be greater for the smaller clubs than for the larger these results lend empirical support to the popular view that unless checked by mechanisms for revenue redistribution within the league the natural tendency is for success to become concen

production functions in the sports industry an empirical analysis of professional cricket production functions are estimated for english county cricket using samples of data for the county championship and the john player league in the seasons of 1981 83 results suggest possible lessons for the management and conduct of the game at the level of the individual club in particular the allocation of resources for developing playing skills the composition of playing staffs selection of teams for particular games and strategies on the field results also provide statistical evidence for some points of conventional wisdom regarding the professional game

competitive balance versus competitive intensity before a match is one of these two concepts more relevant in explaining attendance the case of the french football ligue 1 over the period 2008 2011 the aim of this article is to investigate the determinants of attendance at french football ligue 1 matches over the period 2008 2011 with an emphasis on examining the effects of both competitive balance and intensity before a match competitive balance is measured by the point difference between the two teams concerned by a match in the championship competitive intensity is measured by the point difference for the home team in relation to ranks with sporting stakes results show that competitive balance has an insignificant impact whereas competitive intensity has a significantly positive impact implications are drawn

attendance demand and core support evidence from limited overs cricket in this paper we construct and estimate a model for match attendances in english one day limited overs league cricket our dataset separates pay at gate spectators from club members enabling us to distinguish between the attendance decisions of casual spectators and those of the potentially more committed core supporters in addition to providing a more direct analysis of the relatively underdeveloped issue of core support we also investigate variability within the core apart from providing further evidence regarding demand determination in professional team sports we consider some specific policy implications particular to the peculiar sport of cricket

the determination of transfer fees in english nonleague football in recent years a number of studies have analysed the player transfer market in english professional football this paper examines whether similar factors operate to determine transfer fees in the semiprofessional or nonleague game an empirical model of the nonleague player transfer market is developed in which observed transfer fees are determined by player characteristics time effects selling club characteristics and buying club characteristics using data on 114 transfer fees covering the period 1988 to 1997 we find evidence that the data generating process for transfer fees is broadly similar in both professional and nonleague football

sport as business there is both a popular and academic literature suggesting that owners of sports teams do not profit maximize the alternative formulation entails either win or utility maximization usually subject to a breakeven constraint another line of economic analysis holds that team owners do fundamentally profit maximize or that profit maximization provides a useful benchmark against which to assess actual performance there has been some empirical work attempting to decipher the true objective function of team owners these results are inconclusive objective functions however remain important because they affect both owner behaviour and league performance in practice owners objectives vary by team league and country and are strongly affected by how the team relates to an owner s other assets the next task for modelling the behaviour and performance of sports leagues is to take fuller account of the diversity of ownership objectives within a given league copyright 2003 oxford university press