reduction potentials of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector abstract rapid growth of road vehicles private vehicles in particular has resulted in continuing growth in china s oil demand and imports which has been widely accepted as a major factor effecting future oil availability and prices and a major contributor to china s ghg emission increase this paper is intended to analyze the future trends of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector and to assess the effectiveness of possible reduction measures a detailed model has been developed to derive a reliable historical trend of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector between 2000 and 2005 and to project future trends two scenarios have been designed to describe the future strategies relating to the development of china s road transport sector the business as usual scenario is used as a baseline reference scenario in which the government is assumed to do nothing to influence the long term trends of road transport energy demand the best case scenario is considered to be the most optimized case where a series of available reduction measures such as private vehicle control fuel economy regulation promoting diesel and gas vehicles fuel tax and biofuel promotion are assumed to be implemented energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector up to 2030 are estimated in these two scenarios the total reduction potentials in the best case scenario and the relative reduction potentials of each measure have been estimated

who s on first an empirical test of the coase theorem in baseball because of their highly developed skills major league baseball players generate significant economic rents according to the weak version of the coase theorem the allocation of these players is independent of who controls the rights to these rents which depends on the rules governing competition in the baseball labour market the rules of major league baseball establish a dual system for senior players the market is competitive and players have the right of free agency allowing them to attempt to contract with the team of their choice for players with fewer years of experience the market is monopsonistic and a player s right to play baseball is owned by his current team consequently we simultaneously observe two different allocations of property rights using individual player data for 1979 and 1980 we test whether baseball player movement is independent of the ownership of these rents we estimate the wage marginal revenue determination process for free agent and non free agent movers and

migration trends and earnings of free agents in major league baseball 1976 1979 this paper is an empirical investigation of the effect of team characteristics on the migration pattern of free agents in major league baseball during the period 1976 1979 the results indicate that high quality free agents tend to leave winning teams and move to teams in cities with large or rapidly growing populations the compensation paid to free agents is shown to depend on these team characteristics as well as the players personal characteristics and market conditions

corporate pension policy an empirical investigation an empirical investigation of pension funding levels and plan asset allocations suggests that corporations manage their pension funds as if they are an integral part of overall corporate financial policy this corporate financial perspective contrasts with the traditional view of pension management whereby pension assets are seen as a separate pool to be managed in the best interests of beneficiaries the primary evidence concerns the links between corporate profitability and pension policies first reported pension fund liabilities are linked systematically to company profitability by management s choice of a discount rate more profitable firms tend to choose lower discount rates hence to overstate their pension liabilities relative to those of less profitable firms second profitability has a strong positive association with funding level the proportion of pension assets invested in fixed income securities also has a positive association with funding level corporations with taxable income can maximize tax savings by having fully funded plans invested in heavily taxed securities such as bonds evidence regarding specific motivations behind the corporate pension perspective emerges when the sample is investigated more closely for example the subsample of firms with the heaviest tax burdens exhibits a significant relation between level of funding and tax paying status similarly the subsample of riskiest firms tends to hold underfunded portfolios invested in riskier assets stocks rather than bonds this is consistent with the presence of a pbgc insurance effect the tendency of less financially sound firms to lay off their pension burden on the pension benefit guaranty corporation

externalities property rights and the allocation of resources in major league baseball most economists who have analyzed professional baseball have concluded that two distinctive features of its labor market the reserve clause and player draft influence the distribution of wealth between players and owners but do not affect the allocation of playing talent among teams such conclusions which are strongly at variance with laymen s views of such matters are derived from theoretical considerations rather than empirical examinations our paper examines data from the two decades of major league history and concludes that on the basis of that data the empirical generalizations of previous economists do not appear to be justified

pension deficits an unnecessary evil many companies believe that underfunding pension plans is an inexpensive way to borrow from employees and that mismatching equity investments to bondlike pension promises creates shareholder value to the contrary financial economics calls for fully funding and immunizing accrued pensions for nonguaranteed pensions inadequate funding magnifies employees exposure to their employers financial health exposure that they cannot diversify fully securing the pensions eliminates this inefficiency in employee compensation governmental guarantees eliminate the employees pension risk but invite weak sponsors to extract subsidies from strong ones through underfunding a statutory requirement of full funding and immunization would eliminate these subsidies

structural change competitive balance and the rest of the major leagues i introduction competitive balance is the object of significant attention in the analysis of pro sports leagues under rottenberg s 1956 uncertainty of outcome hypothesis enough imbalance may actually drive down the demand for pro sports and league revenues with it but the analysis of competitive balance itself also is insightful for the impact of league self regulation choices in this paper we extend recent approaches in time series analysis found in schmidt 2001 schmidt and berri 2001a 2001b 2003 2004 lee and fort 2005 henceforth lf and fort and lee 2006 beyond its exclusive focus on major league baseball mlb to the national basketball association nba the national football league nfl and the national hockey league nhl we restrict ourselves only to north american leagues henceforth nals although davies downward and jackson 1995 simmons 1996 and dobson and goddard 1998 provide interesting time series analysis in world leagues as well these works add dramatically to the understanding of structural impacts found from ad hoc cross section approaches the review is in lf in nals a number of structural changes have been hypothesized to dramatically alter competitive balance among teams over time first there are the familiar macro occurrences of depression and war and exogenous league factors like the fundamental alteration in local revenue brought on by increases in the value of local tv broadcast rights beginning in the late 1970s second there are more direct league circumstances changes in the rules of the games the draft the end of the reserve clause changes in the number of teams merger and expansion and their locations salary caps and labor issues lf also examined the impact of racial integration on competitive balance but for the rest of the nals there is no clearly defined point marking their racial integration finally schmidt and berri 2003 and eschker perez and siegler 2004 have begun to investigate the impacts of the influx of foreign born players we apply break point detection techniques described at length in lf to within season competitive balance measures in the rest of the nals there are a number of interesting insights all breaks detected for these other nals occur after 1966 and not until 1970 in the nba rule changes in the nfl in the late 1970s correspond with a break point in that league but generally rule changes do not correspond to any break points the imposition in nals of the draft and free agency conform to rottenberg s invariance proposition ip except for a general negative trend in competitive balance in the nba when they do correspond with break points league expansion and team relocation have predictable impacts but some of these alterations do not have corresponding break points mergers in all three of the other nals correspond in interesting ways with break points that enhance competitive balance but not all mergers correspond with break points there is no correspondence between the break points and the imposition of the salary caps in the nba and the nfl finally we can find no correspondence between break points and any labor issues in any of these leagues except for enhanced balance that followed after the 1998 nba lockout explanations for the negative trend in nba are consistent with the idea that there is a short supply of tall people that is a truly physical limit on talent inputs in the nba originally proposed by berri et al 2005 and an explanation for the second break point in the nhl may have to do with the influx of european players the paper proceeds as follows in section ii we specify the empirical approach and handle the important details of stationary series and detrending the results are shown and discussed within the context of the limits of the break point technique in section iii conclusions round out the paper in section iv ii

the effect of regulation on optimal corporate pension risk abstract we study firms pension prefunding and portfolio allocation choices in a model in which firms trade off the need to compensate workers for the financial risk in their pension benefit against the cost advantage that may be gained by exploiting underpriced pension insurance in the absence of pension insurance the firm minimizes costs by rendering promised benefits free of risk to workers who are assumed to be unable to hedge firm specific risk various forms of government intervention such as benefit guarantees can alter this outcome dramatically by providing the firm with an incentive to shift risk to other parties in this case we find that the firm s decisions depend on among other influences the degree of insurance mispricing the amount of guaranteed benefits the stringency of minimum funding requirements and the costs of financial distress

social security privatization a structure for analysis this paper identifies the key economic issues that must be addressed in the debate over a privatized social security system we examine a two pillar plan the first pillar would consist of a demogrant a small indexed pension of the same dollar amount for all retirees who had contributed to the system over a full lifetime of work the second pillar would consist of a fully funded individual defined contribution account financed by payroll taxes held in financial institutions and directed by participants we explore how such a system would affect the risks households face how it would alter the distribution of income and how it might influence household behavior including incentives to work and save and portfolio choices we also examine macroeconomic issues how the transition to a private plan would occur and what the likely effects would be on national saving we conclude that a two pillar system offers several positive features namely a reduction in political risk an increase in household portfolio choice and improved work incentives disadvantages include less redistributiveness and national risk sharing and increased administrative costs this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

determinants of portfolio performance ii an update 1991 determinants of portfolio performance ii an update financial analysts journal vol 47 no 3 pp 40 48

pensions and wages an hedonic price theory approach this paper examines whether a trade off exists between the level of pension benefits and wages the 1983 survey of consumer finance is used to match detailed information on pension plans to worker characteristics for a random sample of the population the pension wage tradeoff is estimated using both a contractual model of the labor market and the spot market model used in previous studies the results indicate a large negative tradeoff in the contractual model but only a negligible tradeoff in the spot market model results from estimating the underlying structural equations for pensions are also presented copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

investor mood herding and the ramadan effect in view of evidence linking herding and social mood we examine whether the positive mood documented during ramadan translates into higher herding compared to non ramadan days drawing on a sample of seven majority muslim countries we report significant herding during ramadan in most of our sample markets additionally we show that herding appears significantly stronger within rather than outside ramadan for most tests whereby its significance is manifested on both ramadan and non ramadan days overall herding significance within outside ramadan exhibits some variation in its levels across markets in relation to variables reflective of market states both domestically market returns market volume and internationally us market returns us investors sentiment global financial crisis market states

ownership of property rights and the allocation of talents under the reserve clause system that assigns the property rights on the major league baseball players services to teams player transfers are negotiated between teams without the involvement of players in contrast under the current free agency system players with free agent status negotiate directly with potential suitors thus the system assigns the property rights to players using data extracted from the baseball archive http baseball1 com this article examines the effect of the change in the property rights assignment on the allocation of talents across teams we find that the change increased large market teams shares of veteran all star players and the concentration of senior players

nonparametric nonlinear cotrending analysis with an application to interest and inflation in the united states given the assumption that the components of a vector time series are stationary around nonlinear deterministic time trends nonlinear cotrending is the phenomenon that one or more linear combinations of the time series are stationary around a linear trend or a constant hence the series have common nonlinear deterministic time trends in this article i develop nonparametric tests for nonlinear cotrending and i derive nonparametric estimators of the cotrending vectors i apply this approach to the federal funds rate and the consumer price index inflation rate in the united states using monthly data to analyze the price puzzle

transport energy consumption and saving in china abstract at present the global energy consumption of transport sectors is about one third of the total energy consumption of the world such a proportion in china accounts for about 20 over the past decades with the continuous development of china s economy china s energy consumption increases rapidly china became the world s biggest energy consumer in the year of 2009 meanwhile china s transport energy consumption grows greatly and the proportion of the transport terminal energy consumption is expanding considerably recently a number of theoretical methods and technical schemes focusing on china s transport energy consumption and saving were reported in this paper by reviewing the existing reports we discuss and analyze the current status of china s transport energy consumption including four different transport sectors road railway waterway and civil aviation and outline the trend of china s transport energy consumption and the four sectors in addition the technology status of china s energy saving in road railway and waterway transport as well as civil aviation and their development direction are also presented here by analyzing the major development barriers of the technology and policy of china s transport energy saving some related policy suggestions are proposed

racial integration as an innovation empirical evidence from sports leagues this paper treats racial integration as an innovation in economic process in which economic entities find it advantageous to utilize potentially more productive inputs previously unavailable due to law custom or managerial discretion data on the racial integration of major league baseball and atlantic coast conference basketball are employed to address this issue the central question examined is which type of team integrated first losers or winners the results strongly support the idea that entrepreneurship trumps competitive rivalry that is winning teams led the process of racial integration jel li j7 one of the watershed events in u s history is the struggle to achieve a racially integrated society while the civil rights laws and court rulings in the 195o s 196o s and 197o s are among the major changes in public policy that gradually led to a breakdown of jim crow rule in the american south other changes in law and custom also motivated the process of racial integration across time and place indeed segregation was not limited to the south but was a prominent feature of many national organizations and markets despite the extensive commentary on these events from various perspectives there has been very little economic analysis of the actual process of racial integration economists have focused their efforts on the economics of discriminatio n while the actual process by which individuals firms and

the coase theorem free agency and major league baseball a panel study of pitcher mobility from 1961 to 1992 a great deal of conceptual and empirical work in the economic analysis of the law and property rights has been directed towards resolving a controversy surrounding the coase theorem many economists and legal scholars interpret the theorem as containing two propositions the first is that in the absence of transactions costs and wealth effects parties will bargain to an efficient outcome the second holds that the same outcome will be achieved regardless of the distribution of property rights the latter is known as the invariance thesis and it has been a source of dispute among scholars and between economic theorists and owners of economic enterprises e g owners of professional sports teams 5 11 16 23 24 25 26 28 29 this paper provides an econometric test of the invariance proposition major league baseball presents a natural experiment consisting of an industry in which there has been an explicit change in the assignment of property rights beginning in 1879 the reserve clause gave monopsony power to team owners a player could negotiate salary only with the team that owned his contract and the team could trade or sell the player as management saw fit in 1976 this system was replaced by the institution of free agency whereby a player with at least six years of major league experience acquired

what are corporate pension liabilities analyses of corporate pension plans often make unstated assumptions about an implicit labor contract an example of the effect of such an assumption is that many mistakenly believe that if a worker s benefits are tied to final salary he is protected against inflation until retirement also the value of a worker s claims is often considered to be independent of the status of the firm s pension fund these implicit contract assumptions are examined and questioned the implications of analyzed pension liabilities in a manner consistent with the analysis of other corporate liabilities are explored

bidding till bankrupt destructive competition in professional team sports if we don t sign hershiser we ll lose him at the end of the year to an owner who is told by his manager that the club is only one pitcher away from winning it all to win it all some owners will do anything god save us from those owners only one pitcher away los angeles dodger owner peter o malley durslag 1990 i introduction during the labor dispute that delayed the start of the 1990 baseball season team owners raised their usual complaint that free agency will eventually result in a two tier league of have and have not teams to the detriment of league revenues and fan interest but player representatives remained skeptical of the validity of this complaint donald fehr executive director of the major league baseball players association repeatedly pointed out that the owners have never demonstrated a need for radical change in the player compensation system arguing they don t have a basis for it we re looking for the rationale newhan 1990 10 this paper suggests such a rationale in the pursuit of a league championship the talent that turns an average team into a contender makes a disproportionately large contribution to the team s success owners therefore tend to earn most of their quasi rents on the last stars they sign and suffer net losses on much of their infra marginal talent teams with net losses on their overall stock of talent face a shutdown situation and will opt to abandon a competitive market for star athletes reducing the number of remaining participants 1 it is useful to think of athletic talent in the sports industry as a strategic input an input whose productivity for a given user depends on how much of the input is employed by the user s rivals the most well established point about inputs of this type is the tendency to overemploy them in the sports literature this was demonstrated by canes 1974 this paper extends the analysis of strategic inputs in the professional team sports industry to demonstrate how the objective of championship prospects confronts market participants with a persistent shutdown threat of particular concern from an economics perspective the shutdown scenario can result in a credible case of destructive competition in the sense of a competitive process that risks driving at least some participants out of a market even though it is inefficient for them to leave sections ii and iii provide the theoretical basis for the shutdown situation which can emerge in the competition for athletic talent in professional team sports evidence for major league baseball presented in section iv suggests that the theoretical analysis may be empirically relevant section v closes with some implications of the analysis and possible extensions to situations outside the professional sports industry the most important of the implications is the clear potential for welfare reducing effects associated with the shutdown scenario ii team performance criteria and the productivity of athletic talent economists have long recognized that the market for athletic talent is not trouble free researchers such as el hodiri and quirk 1971 demmert 1973 noll 1974 and daly and moore 1981 have discussed the inherent third party externalities of player transactions involving any pair of teams because of the league wide interdependence of relative team performance noll 1974 416 also noted that an unrestricted market for athletic talent can threaten the viability of marginal franchises who rely on rents derived from their players to cover some of their fixed costs and cassing and douglas 1980 modeled the winner s curse phenomenon in the context of an auction market for athletic talent but these analyses do not generate the bleak scenario described by team owners of a free agency environment in which league divisions split sharply into have and have not teams for example the third party externality problem is not specific to free agency it arises regardless of whether players or owners have the marketing rights to player contracts

determinants of portfolio performance in order to delineate investment responsibility and measure performance contribution pension plan sponsors and investment managers need a clear and relevant method of attributing returns to those

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

the provision of incentives in firms i ncentives are the essence of economics despite many wide ranging claims about their supposed importance there has been little empirical assessment of incentive provision for workers the purpose of this paper is to critically overview existing work on the provision of incentives since the interests of workers and their employers are not always aligned a large theoretical literature has emphasized how firms design compensation contracts to induce employees to operate in the firm s interest this literature has reached into many areas of compensation and has pointed to a multitude of different mechanisms that can be used to induce workers to act in the interests of their employers these include piece rates options discretionary bonuses promotions profit sharing efficiency wages deferred compensation and so on my objective here is to evaluate this literature in the light of a growing empirical literature on compensation where possible i will address the literature from two perspectives first an underlying assumption of this literature is that individuals respond to contracts that reward performance accordingly i consider whether agents behave in this way and whether these responses are always in the firm s interest second i address whether firms write contracts with these responses in mind in other words do contracts look like the predictions of the theory incentives are provided to workers

china s new energy development status constraints and reforms abstract as the conventional energy resources are limited and environmental problems are becoming increasingly prominent new energy resources being environmental friendly and renewable are paid more and more attention by all the countries at present the development and utilization of new energy resources in china has made progress however due to the factors such as the international energy competition situation china s productivity level and its development phase and the lagging of related system and mechanism reforms china s new energy has been faced with constraints in the aspects of the system efficiency supply region and technology if related reforms were not implemented the development of new energy in china would be severely hindered for a long period of time in the future in view of this this paper reviewed the development status of china s new energy industry and analyzed five aspects of constraints moreover a discussion was carried out from four aspects of the system consumption production technology reforms in order to break the corresponding constraints finally the future development planning of new energy was presented all in all the deep investigation into china s new energy development status constraints reforms and planning in this paper is aimed at promoting the reform of new energy resources production and utilization modes improving the policy system continuously addressing the deep rooted institutional contradictions of the new energy industry and providing the reference and advice for the transformation of china s energy structure

privatizing social security at home and abroad a century has passed since otto von bismarck instituted the first social security system in germany since then government provision of retirement income has spread around the globe alleviating poverty among the elderly providing life span insurance via old age annuities overcoming the samaritan s dilemma by forcing everyone to save and in many countries extending coverage to include old age health insurance but for all the good it has done social security is severely limiting world saving investment and growth it threatens to bankrupt the young and future generations of some of the world s leading nations see jagadeesh gokhale et al 1996 it is the chain letter pay as you go method of financing social security that lies at the heart of the problem taking income from young savers and giving it to old spenders while placating the young with promises of repayment not only reduces national saving but straddles the next generation with the obligation the debt to meet these promises the size of these debts and the burden on the next generation will be much greater for countries with rapidly aging populations would privatization solve social security s problems this paper provides a framework for thinking about this issue

guaranteed trouble the economic effects of the pension benefit guaranty corporation how did the pension benefit guaranty corporation a government corporation created to insure the pensions of workers and retirees in bankrupt firms end up facing financial distress of its own how did an organization designed to strengthen retirement security come to be seen as contributing to retirement insecurity the superficial answer is that the pbgc s current funding problem arises from the decline in stock market prices in 2000 which reduced pension assets and the fall in interest rates at about the same time which boosted the present value of pension liabilities but more fundamentally much of the blame for the poor financial state of the pbgc as well as the defined benefit system more generally lies in some major design flaws of the pbgc pension insurance program specifically the pbgc has 1 failed to properly price insurance and thus encouraged excessive risk taking by plan sponsors 2 failed to promote adequate funding of pension obligations and 3 failed to promote sufficient information disclosure to market participants together these three flaws produced a system in which many firms fail to adequately fund their pension obligations knowing that in financial distress they can dump their pension liabilities onto the pbgc though the pension protection act of 2006 made some progress in improving the pbgc program it failed to correct these three major problems fully absent further reform substantial problems will continue to plague the private defined benefit pension system in decades to come to prevent this deterioration this paper concludes that congress should transfer much of the responsibility for defined benefit pension insurance to compulsory private markets

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

valuation optimal asset allocation and retirement incentives of pension plans we provide a framework in which we link the valuation and asset allocation policies of defined benefits plans with the lifetime marginal productivity schedule of the worker and the pension plan formula in turn we examine the retirement policies that are implied by the primitives of the model and the value of pension obligations our model provides an explicit valuation formula for a stylized defined benefits plan the optimal asset allocation policies consist of the replicating portfolio of the pension liabilities and the growth optimum portfolio independent of the pension liabilities we show that the worker will retire when the ratio of pension benefits to current wages reaches a critical value which depends on the parameters of the pension plan and the discount rate using numerical techniques we analyze the feedback effect of retirement policies on the valuation of plans and on the asset allocation decisions article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

are free agents perspicacious peregrinators the perspicacious peregrinator model of solomon w polachek and francis w horvath hypothesizes that individuals decide to migrate based on the size of potential gains this model is tested using themigration decisions of major league baseball players between 1977 and1979 potential gains are measure d as the differ ence between earnings with and without migration a distinction is made between players eligible for free agency and those ineligible so as to a ccount for differences in the level of competition for players services in diff erent segments of this market migration is found tobe related to the expected gain from earnings for players eligible for free agency but not for those ineli gible copyright 1987 by mit press

review of the small wind turbine sector in kenya status and bottlenecks for growth abstract rural electrification has been a long standing goal in kenya but there is still a long way to go with only 7 rural access to electricity therefore there lies great potential for small wind turbines swt in areas with sufficient wind resources this paper presents a review of the swt sector in kenya the review consists of a description of the status of the sector and a more in depth investigation into factors and dynamics that hinder sector growth this investigation is performed by using a combination of two theoretical approaches strategic niche management snm and the multi level perspective mlp the main insights from this review are that the swt sector in kenya is growing but is characterized by one time experiments fragmented learning experiences lack of focus and low quality products and services the weakly aligned network with many underperforming actors and unaligned expectations is the main cause of the weak current status of the sector despite the low rural electricity access and growing electricity demand niche upscaling remains cumbersome due to external factors such as corruption poverty lack of innovation and an anti entrepreneurial mind set the results of this review serve as inputs for recommendations for all niche actors on what can be done to make the niche grow in addition the paper includes ideas on how the snm and mlp approaches could become better suited for reviewing and analyzing renewable energy technologies in developing countries such as swts in the kenyan context

domestic tourism expenditures the non linear effects of length of stay and travel party size the independent variables length of stay and travel party size are recurrent determinants of expenditures in micro level tourism studies in most of this research it has been tacitly assumed that these variables have linear effects on tourism spending this study situated in a norwegian setting questions this approach by explicitly scrutinizing the possible non linearities in the relationships between tourism expenditures on the one hand and length of stay and travel party size on the other the empirical results suggest a positive but diminishing relationship between length of stay and tourism expenditures and a convex i e u relationship between travel party size and tourism expenditures the study also considers how a number of other key independent variables affect tourism expenditures finally some managerial and scholarly implications are discussed

energy practices among small and medium sized tourism enterprises a case of misdirected effort abstract discussion of sustainable tourism has become dominated by the issue of climate change as a major source of emissions the tourism sector has a vital role to play in efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change within the current body of knowledge and among major policy discourses the prevailing paradigm has been to encourage action reduced emissions will follow innovations in managerial practices and the uptake of the latest most resource efficient technologies this paper examines energy practices among small and medium sized tourism enterprises smtes reporting empirical research conducted as part of a five year programme although energy was a significant cost of production it did not feature prominently in the business administration of most smtes a major knowledge gap was exposed regarding how energy was consumed and administered by individual businesses the paper argues for a major shift in thinking away from the number of actions as the key success criterion action alone is no guarantee of emissions reductions in a sector where growth is the dominant imperative instead a crucial reorientation towards stimulating higher levels of energy literacy among smtes is necessary in parallel to rebalancing of attention towards energy generation

the sports business as a labor market laboratory with superior data on compensation and productivity as well as the occurrence of abrupt dramatic market structure and player allocation rules changes sports labor markets offer an excellent setting in which to test economic hypotheses this paper reviews evidence from sports in four areas employer monopsony discrimination the coase theorem and incentive contracts supervision and performance there is considerable evidence of monopsony as well as for the existence of some forms of discrimination against minority athletes incentive contracts have strong effects on player performance and behavior and there is mixed evidence on the predictions of the coase theorem

regional differences in china s fossil energy consumption an analysis for the period 1997 2013 abstract measuring regional differences in fossil energy consumption is the first step to the study of natural resource allocation and utilization this paper employs annual and cumulative consumption gini indexes as well as the deviation index to discuss regional differences in the per capita consumption of fossil energy and related products across 30 chinese provinces from 1997 to 2013 the results show that chinese inter provincial gini ratio of fossil energy consumption is below 0 3 in recent years and change in per capita energy consumption is the key factor behind the decline in the overall gini index unlike existing studies based only on annual flows of energy consumption this paper also focuses on cumulative energy consumption moreover decomposing annual and cumulative consumption gini coefficients by type group and incremental variation is rarely seen in other studies based on the above positive analysis the paper provides some policymaking suggestions

the fable of the bees an economic investigation ever since a c pigou wrote his books on welfare a divergence between private and social costs has provided the main argument for instituting government action to correct allegedly inefficient market activities the analysis in such cases has been designed less to aid our understanding of how the economic system operates than to find flaws in it to justify policy recommendations both to illustrate the argument and to demonstrate the nature of the actual situation the quest has been for real world examples of such defects

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

implications of a long term increase in oil prices for tourism it is expected that global oil prices will increase in the future assessing the overall economic impacts on tourism is difficult as oil price rises will be concomitant with global changes in other commodity prices exchange rates and incomes a general equilibrium perspective is therefore presented in this paper the model couples a global general equilibrium model with a purpose built cge model of new zealand which focuses on describing tourism supply and demand in some detail the results indicate a decrease in real gross national disposable income of 1 7 for a doubling of oil price and a 9 reduction in the real value of tourism exports as a result of segment specific price increases and differing income and exchange rate effects and elasticities the reduction in demand for tourism in new zealand by 18 segments differs substantially the greatest reduction in demand is observed for tourists from the united kingdom

diversity and performance this study measures the performance of u s firms initiating same sex domestic partnership benefit ssdpb policies the results show that holding these firms upon their ssdpb initiation in a calendar portfolio earns a four factor annualized excess return alpha of approximately 10 over the 1995 2008 sample period beating 95 of all professional mutual funds in the united states this finding is robust to several tests of reverse causality ssdpb adopters also show significant improvement in operating performance relative to nonadopters this paper was accepted by brad barber finance

public attitudes to biofuel use in aviation evidence from an emerging tourist market abstract aviation generates substantial carbon footprint which is projected to increase due to the continuous growth in international tourism especially in emerging markets this carbon footprint should be mitigated to bring the tourism industry towards its sustainability goals within a portfolio of prospective carbon mitigation measures biofuels represent a technological innovation which holds substantial potential to reduce the carbon significance of aviation the success of technological innovations often depends on public opinion the role of public opinion is particularly relevant in the aviation context where safety considerations of technological innovations may determine consumer choice focusing on poland an emerging tourist market in europe this study explored public opinion on biofuel use in aviation it found that public understanding of the perspectives of aviation biofuel technology including its safety is limited and needs to be reinforced public distrust in the national institutions of power and the industry sector representatives in poland calls for educational and public awareness raising campaigns to be delivered by the third sector organisations

the economic effects of climate change greenhouse gas emissions are fundamental both to the world s energy system and to its food production the production of co2 the predominant gas implicated in climate change is intrinsic to fossil fuel combustion specifically thermal energy is generated by breaking the chemical bonds in the carbohydrates oil coal and natural gas and oxidizing the components to co2 and h2o one cannot have cheap energy without carbon dioxide emissions similarly methane ch4 emissions an important greenhouse gas in its own right are necessary to prevent the build up of hydrogen in anaerobic digestion and decomposition one cannot have beef mutton dairy or rice without methane emissions climate change is the mother of all externalities larger more complex and more uncertain than any other environmental problem the sources of greenhouse gas emissions are more diffuse than any other environmental problem every company every farm every household emits some greenhouse gases the effects are similarly pervasive weather affects agriculture energy use health and many aspects of nature which in turn affects everything and everyone the causes and consequences of climate change are very diverse and those in low income countries who contribute least to climate change are most vulnerable to its effects climate change is also a long term problem some greenhouse gases have an atmospheric life time measured in tens of thousands of years the quantities of emissions involved are enormous in 2000 carbon dioxide emissions alone and excluding land use change were 24 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide tco2

when do increasing carbon taxes accelerate global warming a note on the green paradox abstract the green paradox by hans werner sinn suggests that increasing resource taxes accelerate global warming because resource owners increase near term extraction in fear of higher future taxation in this note we show that this effect does only occur for the specific set of carbon taxes that increase at a rate higher than the effective discount rate of the resource owners we calculate a critical initial value for the carbon tax that leads to a decreased cumulative consumption over the entire infinite time horizon applying our formal findings to carbon taxes for several mitigation targets we conclude that there is a low risk of a green paradox in case the regulator implements and commits to a permanently mal adjusted tax this remaining risk can be avoided by emissions trading scheme as suggested by sinn as long as the emission caps are set appropriately and the intertemporal permit market works correctly

the portable guarantee to exchange back an old defined benefit for a new defined contribution dc pension plan as a defined contribution dc pension plan is introduced to replace a defined benefit db pension plan the portability benefit from a dc pension plan costs the employees to bear the investment risk from managing the pension fund to protect the retirement income and maintain the portability benefit a guarantee to exchange back the old defined benefit is supposed to be demanded for the new dc plan s participants in the guarantee market in light of such a demand this article applies a claim terminating insurance pricing model to offer a contingent claims pricing model for a portable pension guarantee using the new labor pension plan of taiwan as an illustration a guaranteed dc pension will carry an extra cost of almost 50 up to over 100 of the plan s contributions over the participant s work life given the current mandatory minimum requirement of a contribution rate of 6

on the evolution of competitive balance the impact of an increasing global search the coase theorem maintains that where free market precepts exist the allocation of property rights does not impact the distribution of resources an application to major league baseball suggests that institutions such as free agency and the reverse order amateur draft would not impact player distributions and therefore would not impact competitive balance the present study finds that the distribution of wins is generally consistent with the precepts of the coase theorem and therefore suggests a course for those who wish to alter the level of competitive balance major league baseball should increase its focus on expanding the size of its labor pool jel o15 l83 c22

prospects of pakistan china energy and economic corridor abstract china s seaborne foreign oil supply through the strait of malacca is facing challenges because of territorial disputes pirate attacks and geopolitics the pakistan china energy and economic corridor pceec offers the option of constructing an oil pipeline to bypass the strait of malacca this paper studied the prospects of the pceec in the context of the security of china s foreign oil supply chain we assessed all the existing and proposed oil supply routes from the middle east and africa to china s border in terms of supply timeframes costs energy consumption and ghg emissions we used weight based model to estimate the capex opex and per barrel levelized cost of a proposed oil pipeline in the pceec from economic time energy and environmental perspective our assessment suggested that the construction of an oil pipeline in the pceec would be compatible with the existing routes and offer the shortest time for transporting oil to china s border the pceec would offer numerous prospects for regional energy and economic connectivity for both countries and the region including social economic commercial and geopolitical benefits

reduction potential of co2 emissions in china s transport industry newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1311 19436 ministry of education 10 jbg 013 national social science foundation of china 71203186

testing coase theorem the case of free agency in nba this study seeks to test the applicability of the coase theorem to the allocation of players within according to the coase theorem a player s final allocation would be the same no matter who has ownership of his playing rights if there are no transaction costs what ownership affects is just the allocation of wealth using data from the national basketball association nba this article argues that player mobility is likely to be affected by player ownership due to transaction cost imposed by the institution it is also concluded that performance indicators used for value estimation vary by position and that this also affects player transfer

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

on the evolution of competition an application of nonlinear tests a corollary of the coase theorem maintains that where free market precepts exist the allocation of property rights would not impact the level of competition within an industry within the major league baseball industry for example the theorem would suggest that institutional arrangements such as free agency would not impact player distributions and therefore would fail to alter competitive balance in order to examine this implication the present paper investigates the univariate behaviour of competition balance in the end it appears that an increased labour pool rather than institutional changes is responsible for movements in competitive levels within the industry specifically the evidence suggests that competitive balance measures are trend stationary however the trend is nonlinear and is common to baseball s labour pool i e the two co trend

rear view mirror driving in defined contribution systems the strange formula of the chilean pension funds the pioneering regulation on chilean pension funds under defined contribution program requires private managing institutions to exclusively manage individual accounts and meet a minimum return to their clients the purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the investment behaviour of pension funds and to contribute to the social security debate the findings reveal the benchmark significantly explains funds performance pension funds tend to replicate their asset allocations to exhibit similarities in returns we believe the obligation on fund managers to attain a minimum guaranteed return based on relative performance evaluation encourages them not to deviate from the industry s performance indeed the benchmark explains most of the group performance to hold similar allocations managers may monitor each others through their investment style

do differences in presidential economic advisers matter using data on members on the council of economic advisors as well as us treasury secretaries and omb directors from 1952 through 2005 i investigate the effect of economic advisors educational and employment backgrounds on the time series performance of several policy variables ivy league advisors appear to raise non defense government spending although the size of the impact differs by president while voter preferences appear to matter for a wider variety of policy variables changes in federal regulation and marginal tax rates the share of ivy league advisors is at least as important as voter preferences in explaining non defense spending

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

crime and punishment in major league baseball the case of the designated hitter and hit batters i introduction are you seriously going to throw at somebody when you re facing randy johnson curt schilling 1 in 1973 amid waning fan interest in baseball the american league al of major league baseball mlb instituted the designated hitter rule as an experiment the stated goal of this rule change was to boost offensive output by increasing the talent pool of batters in the lineup traditionally the competing teams field nine players who must play defense in the field and bat because of the importance of the pitcher who is responsible for putting every ball in play teams rely on pitching ability and ignore the hitting ability when choosing the pitcher in the lineup therefore pitchers tend to be very poor hitters by allowing teams to substitute a player of greater hitting ability known as the designated hitter dh to bat for the pitcher the total offensive output increases the experiment has since grown into an institution in the al that differentiates it from the national league nl where all players must bat and play in the field the dh succeeded in turning the al into the power league as intended but an unintended consequence of the rule change is that the al now has more batters hit by pitches than the nl traditional baseball lore holds that the lack of retaliatory punishment in the al for hitting batters is the cause of this phenomenon veteran nl manager dusty baker describes the deterrent impact from a pitcher s point of view you can be bold in the american league and get away with hitting batters it s different in our league where you have to hit 2 pitchers who do not have to bat where they might face retaliation are more willing to risk hitting batters than pitchers who do bat given that the rules of the game in both leagues are identical except for the use of the dh mlb created ideal conditions for a natural experiment to examine the impact of the dh on hit batters in a controlled setting 3 several economists have looked at the issue and found that there is a statistically significant relationship between the dh and hit batters however the reason for this difference is subject to much debate it is possible for the hit batter differential to exist without the deterrent effect of retaliation the rulebook punishment for hitting a batter awarding the hit batter first base makes retaliatory enforcement costly for teams to employ pitchers are typically poor hitters who rarely reach base via hitting while batters who are dhs are typically good hitters the fewer hit batters in the nl may reflect the lineup composition in which the pitcher must bat nl teams will try to avoid plunking pitchers because they are relatively less likely to reach base than non pitchers while al teams do not have this easy out in their batting lineups a problem with previous studies of the subject is their reliance on yearly aggregate data hit batters are rare events approximately 1 of all plate appearances result in a hit batter that occur in the course of game where other incentives are quite relevant this means that identifying small changes in pitcher behavior from specific factors will be difficult to identify with aggregate data differentiating between the two competing explanations for the hit batter differential between leagues deterrence and lineup composition requires micro level data where we can control for in game strategic incentives for hitting batters using a unique play by play data set that allows us to control for specific factors that affect hit batters we find that pitchers are still more likely to hit batters with a dh in the lineup than without and though pitchers are hit more rarely than other players pitchers do experience retaliation for hitting batters retaliation against pitchers who plunk batters which was not found in earlier studies is needed to generate an effective deterrent for pitchers in the nl

pass or run an empirical test of the matching pennies game using data from the national football league this article examines play calling in the national football league nfl it finds that a mixed strategy equilibrium game explains nfl play calling better than standard optimization techniques when a quarterback is injured and replaced with a less capable backup standard optimization theory suggests that the offense will run more often passing less our game theoretic model predicts that the offense will not change its play calling because the defense will play against the run more often using every first half play from the 11 teams that had a starting quarterback miss action because of injury in the 2006 season we find that the injury did not alter the likelihood that the offense would pass we also find that coaches randomly mix passing and running plays as the mixed strategy games predict

tourism s climate mitigation dilemma flying between rich and poor countries stronger demand for medium to long haul air transport is the main driver of the tourism industry s increasing greenhouse gas ghg emissions causing the current development of global tourism to be environmentally unsustainable efficiency improvements and biofuel usage are unlikely to maintain pace with the projected growth in transport volume therefore curbing the growing demand for air transport has been suggested as another option for the sustainable development of tourism however the political and industry discourse concerning the restriction of air transport tends to label such a restriction as unethical as such limits would impair the development that tourism brings to poor countries this paper investigates the possible impacts of air travel restrictions on the least developed countries ldcs and non ldcs by examining global tourism the impacts on ldcs are found to be neutral on average with both losses and gains in tourist arrivals the extent of any losses does not appear to be beyond the scope of possible economic compensation

rule changes and competitive balance in japanese professional baseball i introduction since rottenberg s 1956 classic analysis of baseball s reserve clause economists have been interested in whether the rules for initially allocating players among major league baseball mlb teams affect their final allocation el hodiri and quirk 1971 formalized rottenberg s analysis of player allocation rules for a sports league in which each team independently maximizes its profits within the league s institutional constraints 1 consider the effect of a player draft regime and an open bidding regime on the allocation of new players often called rookies if a player draft allows team a to claim initially a particular new player and that player would generate a higher marginal product with team b then the two teams have incentives to make an exchange and send the player to team b alternatively under an open bidding regime the new player signs with the team presenting the highest offer i e team b with which he generates the highest marginal product assuming that transaction costs of exchanging players are zero el hodiri and quirk showed that the final allocation of players across teams will be the same in both regimes this result that the final allocation of players does not depend on the rules governing the initial allocation of players is baseball s version of the coase theorem following coase s 1960 analysis this invariance result vanishes if there are obstacles to exchanging players after the initial allocation in an open bidding regime players are initially allocated to the team with which they have the highest marginal product thereby eliminating the need for player exchanges since the best players are likely to generate the highest marginal product with teams in cities that have a high demand for winning games in an open bidding regime these teams are likely to have higher winning percentages and win more championships than other teams 2 by contrast in a draft regime the best players are often initially allocated to a team located in a city with a low demand for winning games if there are obstacles to player exchange then players will be allocated more evenly across teams under a draft regime and competitive balance should improve both within a given season and over time 3 empirical studies have used performance data from north american mlb to analyze whether changes in the rules for allocating rookies among teams affect competitive balance fort and quirk s 1995 recent study found that mlb s change in 1965 from an open bidding to a draft regime for allocating new players increased competitive balance in the american league and had little effect on competitive balance in the national league the power of statistical tests conducted with the mlb data is however severely limited due to the small number of observations from the draft regime period this article uses a larger data set from japanese baseball to examine the same rule change that economists have analyzed for mlb remarkable as it may seem the japanese professional baseball league jpbl adopted the same rule change from an open bidding to a draft regime for rookies in the same year 1965 as major league baseball our goal is to examine how the rule change in the jpbl affected competitive balance in its two leagues and to compare the outcomes of these two remarkably similar experiments set in two very different cultures ii studies of north american mlb and japanese jpbl daly and moore 1981 compared player allocation in the two regimes for allocating rookies by examining mlb s 1965 switch from an open bidding to a draft regime they used pre and post 1965 performance data from the american and national leagues to examine several measures of competitive balance in the post 1965 draft regime they found substantially more competitive balance in the american league and somewhat more competitive balance in the national league using different tests for competitive balance fort and quirk 1995 1 282 86 also found evidence for more competitive balance in the american league but found no change in competitive balance in the national league

opportunities and challenges for renewable energy policy in china renewable energy is the inevitable choice for sustainable economic growth for the harmonious coexistence of human and environment as well as for the sustainable development government support is the key and initial power for developing renewable energy in this article an overall review has been conducted on renewable energy development policy including laws and regulations economic encouragement technical research and development industrialized support and government model projects etc in china on this basis a systematic analysis has been conducted on the disadvantages of renewable energy development policy on the point of long term effective system for renewable energy development a series of policy advice has been offered such as strengthening the policy coordination enhancing regional policy innovation echoing with clean development mechanism implementing process management constructing market investment and financing system it is expected that the above advices could be helpful to ever improvement of renewable energy development policy c 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

do new major league ballparks pay for themselves in recent decades local governments have allocated billions of dollars to subsidizing construction of facilities for major league baseball we use panel data that cover all major league baseball teams from 1989 2001 to estimate the impact of ballpark construction on team revenue our estimates imply that a typical new ballpark generates additional revenue sufficient to cover most or all of its capital cost it follows that any external benefits of ballpark construction are likely to be inframarginal and that continuance of large public subsidies cannot be justified on economic grounds

forecasting world and regional aviation jet fuel demands to the mid term 2025 abstract this article provides jet fuel demand projections at the worldwide level and for eight geographical zones until 2025 air traffic forecasts are performed using dynamic panel data econometrics then the conversion of air traffic projections into quantities of jet fuel is accomplished by using a complementary approach to the traffic efficiency method developed previously by the uk department of trade and industry to support the intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc 1999 according to our main scenario air traffic should increase by about 100 between 2008 and 2025 at the world level corresponding to a yearly average growth rate of 4 7 world jet fuel demand is expected to increase by about 38 during the same period corresponding to a yearly average growth rate of 1 9 per year according to these results energy efficiency improvements allow reducing the effect of air traffic rise on the increase in jet fuel demand but do not annihilate it jet fuel demand is thus unlikely to diminish unless there is a radical technological shift or air travel demand is restricted

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