Contents for IJSF Issue 4:2
| The Role of Managers in Team Performance, pp. 75-93 Authors: David J. Berri, Michael A. Leeds, Eva Marikova Leeds, and Michael Mondello |
| Abstract:The role of the manager in promoting production is a little-understood phenomenon. In particular, it is difficult to separate managers’ contributions from the abilities of the workers they supervise. Firms may therefore mistakenly attribute the contributions of the workers to the managers who happen to oversee them. With its plethora of performance data, the National Basketball Association (NBA) provides a natural setting to measure the contribution of a head coach to the performance of his team. We find that some highly regarded coaches deserve their accolades, but several coaches owe their success to managing highly talented teams. Conversely, some coaches with mediocre records have made significant contributions to the performance of their players. Most coaches, however, do not have a statistically significant impact on their players or their teams, making them nothing more than the “principal clerks” that Adam Smith called managers over 200 years ago. |
| Estimates of the Dimensions of the Sports Market in the US, pp. 94-113 Authors: Brad R. Humphreys and Jane E. Ruseski |
| Abstract:We examine the dimensions of the sports market in the United States.We investigate sports participation, sports viewing, and the supply and demand sides of the sports market. Our estimates of the value of economic activity in the sports market rang from $44 to $60 billion in 2005. The 49,169 firms in the industry employed just over one million workers. About 118 million people participated regularly in sports in 2005, and more than 277 million individuals attended spectator sporting events. |
| Golf Match: The Choice by PGA Tour Golfers of which Tournaments to Enter, pp. 114-135 Authors: Stephen Shmanske |
| Abstract:This paper compares two methods of examining the entry choice of professional golfers, focusing on the size of the purse, the strength of the competition, and a newly constructed variable, the match of the player’s skills with the skills rewarded at each tournament, while controlling for some dynamic factors such as year end pushes to cross relative earnings thresholds. Logit regressions are one method of examining the entry choice. A second method exploits combinatorial arithmetic. Choosing which n of N tournaments to play is equivalent to choosing n balls without replacement from an urn with N balls. The results show that golfers choose tournaments with higher purses, with a better skills match, and when the competition is fiercest. |
| The Causality between Salary Structures and Team Performance: A Panel Analysis in a Professional Baseball League, pp. 136-150 Authors: Wen-Jhan Jane, Gee San, and Yi-Pey Ou |
| Abstract:This paper provides a comprehensive study of the causality between pay and performance for professional sports teams. By using the total salary payment, as well as the dispersion of salary payment of the baseball teams in Taiwan, we engage in a simultaneous regression of a Granger Causality Test for each team’s salary structures and their corresponding performance. Our empirical results show that the causality only runs from the dispersion of salary payment to team performance, and not vice versa. As such, both the tournament hypothesis, which emphasizes the effect of salary dispersion, and the Yankee paradox, which proposes the negative externality for a team with high payroll, are thus confirmed. The one-way causality results suggest that teams must rely more on internal wage adjustments, especially on the dispersion of salary, under the league with strict restrictions on the mobility of players. |
| Book Review: The Economics of Intercollegiate Sports, pp. 151-152 Authors: Marvin Washington |
| Abstract:The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is the most dominant institution organizing collegiate and amateur athletics in the United States and potentially the world. The NCAA, founded in 1906, is composed of more than 1,000 schools, organizes competition for 40 sports, and coordinates the athletic competitions of more than 90 championships. As the commercial shown during the men’s Division I postseason basketball tournament (March Madness) states, the NCAA organizes competitions for more than 300,000 student athletes, most of which will be going pro in something other than sports. |
