nep-spo New Economics Papers
on Sports and Economics
Issue of 2014‒12‒29
five papers chosen by
João Carlos Correia Leitão
Universidade da Beira Interior

  1. In-season head-coach dismissals and the performance of professional football teams By van Ours, Jan C; Van Tuijl, Martin
  2. Soccer jersey sponsors and the world cup By L.F.M. Groot; J. Ferwerda
  3. Career Prospects and Effort Incentives: Evidence from Professional Soccer By Jeanine Miklós-Thal; Hannes Ullrich
  4. Megaeventos Esportivos e Inflação ao Consumidor By Waldyr Dutra Areosa; Marta Baltar Moreira Areosa
  5. On Fixing International Cricket Matches By Sarah Jewell; James Reade

  1. By: van Ours, Jan C; Van Tuijl, Martin
    Abstract: This paper studies the causes and consequences of in-season changes of the head-coach of association football teams. We exploit data from the highest level of Dutch professional football during 14 successive seasons. An in-season change of the head-coach depends on recent match results and the difference between actual results and expectations as measured using bookmaker data. We find that, after the head-coach has been replaced, teams perform better than before. However, the performance is also better than before for a control group of coach replacements that did not occur. From this we conclude that replacement of head-coaches does not improve team performance.
    Keywords: association football; coaches; performance
    JEL: J44 L83
    Date: 2014–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10191&r=spo
  2. By: L.F.M. Groot; J. Ferwerda
    Abstract: The market for soccer jerseys is a multibillion market dominated by Adidas, Nike and Puma. This paper investigates whether jersey sponsorship has a non-arbitrary effect on the outcomes of World Cup knockout matches. The results show that in the knockout stages of the last four World Cup tournaments, especially national teams sponsored by Adidas perform significantly better than expected, while teams sponsored by any other company than Adidas, Puma or Nike perform worse. The average advantage per knockout match for the Adidas teams is to raise the probability to win by 10 percent point.
    Keywords: Jersey sponsorship, advertising, Elo-rating, soccer, football
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:use:tkiwps:1407&r=spo
  3. By: Jeanine Miklós-Thal; Hannes Ullrich
    Abstract: It is difficult to test the prediction that future career prospects create implicit effort incentives because researchers cannot randomly “assign†career prospects to economic agents. To overcome this challenge, we use data from professional soccer, where employees of the same club face different external career opportunities depending on their nationality. We test whether the career prospect of being selected to a Euro Cup national team affects players' pre-Cup performances, using nationals of countries that did not participate in the Euro Cup as a control group. We find that the Euro Cup career prospect has positive effects on the performances of players with intermediate chances of being selected to their national team, but negative effects on the performances of players whose selection is very probable. Our findings have implications for the incentive effects of within-firm promotions and of external career opportunities.
    Keywords: incentives, effort, career concerns, reputation, contests, tournaments, promotions
    JEL: D23 L29 M52
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1432&r=spo
  4. By: Waldyr Dutra Areosa; Marta Baltar Moreira Areosa
    Abstract: The aim of this study is to provide a preliminary measure of the impact of a mega sports event in consumer inflation. This measure can serve as a proxy of the impact of the FIFA World Cup 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games in the evolution of inflation in Brazil, measured by the National Index of Consumer Price (IPCA). We used the method of Brückner and Pappa (2013) adapted to handle two features: (i) hyperinflation and (ii) inertia. The modified methodology was applied to an unbalanced panel data for the consumer inflation of 173 countries and all mega sporting events during the period 1948-2022, including FIFA World Cups and both Winter and Summer Olympic Games. The results indicate that the impact of these events on the IPCA is limited and transitory
    Date: 2014–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bcb:wpaper:373&r=spo
  5. By: Sarah Jewell (Department of Economics, University of Reading); James Reade (Department of Economics, University of Reading)
    Abstract: Corruption is hidden action which distorts allocations of resources away from competitive outcomes. Hence the detection of such actions is both dicult yet important. In many economic contexts, agent actions are unobservable by principals and hence detection is dicult; sport offers a well-measured context in which individual actions are documented in great detail. In recent years the sport of cricket, which records a huge volume of statistics, has been beset by a number of corruption scandals surrounding the xing of matches. We use 18 one day international (ODI) matches that are known to be xed by one of the teams involved and anal yse a wide range of observed statistics from all ODI matches since 1971, in order to determine whether corruption manifests itself in recorded out comes. We nd that corruption does aect a number of observed outcomes in anticipated ways, suggesting that both the increased reporting of statistics, and the statistical analysis of them may be a useful tool in detecting corruption.
    Keywords: corruption, econometric modelling, sport
    JEL: D73 C50 L83
    Date: 2014–11–20
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2014-08&r=spo

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