The Oxford Handbook of Sports Economics

Abstract This book is the first volume of the two-volume The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Sports, which includes chapters by authors in the quickly growing field of sports economics. The two volumes recognize two ways that economics and sports interact. First, economic analysis has helped everyone understand many of the peculiar institutions in sports. And second, quality data about individual productivity, salaries, career histories, teamwork, and managerial behavior has helped economists study topics as varied as the economics of discrimination, salary dispersion, and antitrust policy. These two themes of economics—helping sports and sports helping economics—provide the organizational structure to the two-volume set. Sports economists employ or comment on practically every field in economics. Labor economics comes into play in the areas of salary formation, salary dispersion, and discrimination. Baseball's history and the NCAA are studied with industrial organization and antitrust. Public finance and contingent value modeling are addressed in the study of stadium finance and franchise location. The efficient market hypothesis is examined with data from gambling markets. Macroeconomic effects are studied with data from mega events such as the Super Bowl, the World Cup, and the Olympics. The limits of econometrics are pushed and illustrated with superb data in many of the chapters herein. Topics in applied microeconomics such as demand estimation and price discrimination are also covered in several of the included chapters. Game theory, measurement of production functions, and measurement of managerial efficiency all come into play.