PLAYBOOKS AND CHECKBOOKS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ECONOMICS, OF MODERN SPORTS, S. Szymanski, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009, 225 pages. ISBN 978-0-691-12750-7

Simon Rottenberg is credited with starting the literature on sports economics in 1956 with his analysis of major league baseball’s labour market. Over fifty years later, sports economics has evolved from the study of sports labour markets to the sophisticated use of sports datasets to test previously unexplored hypotheses in the growing fields of sportometrics and forensic econometrics (see McCormick and Tollison 1984 and Duggan and Levitt 2002). Stefan Szymanski’s Playbooks and Checkbooks gives an engaging overview of how economics can help explain the phenomenon that is modern-day professional sports which is coupled with relevant historical anecdotes.doping; economics of sport; illegal activities

Suddenly last summer: how the tourist tsunami hit Lisbon

En el presente artículo fijamos nuestra atención en la capital de Portugal, Lisboa, y su reciente proceso de turistificación, que ha forzado a una revisión colectiva de la identidad de la ciudad y sus narrativas patrimoniales, para encajar los crecientes contrastes entre marginalidad y centralidad, circulación y calma, abandono y atención pública, indigencia y afluencia, spleen y euforia. Después de introducir nuestro foco teórico en el problema de los “comunales urbanos” y de presentar nuestra metodología cualitativa, pasamos a describir el proceso histórico que ha conducido a la transformación de Lisboa: desde el mega-evento de la Expo’98 cuando Lisboa era todavía un destino turístico periférico, hasta la presente economía urbana, especializada en el turismo y los servicios. Vamos a centrarnos especialmente en los proyectos y políticas implantadas “desde arriba” durante aquellos años y en la crisis financiera de 2008, usada para liberalizar varios aspectos de la economía.In this paper, we focus our attention in Portugal’s capital city, Lisbon, and in the recent process of its touristification, which is forcing a collective revision of the city’s identity and its patrimonial narratives, to make sense of the growing contrasts between marginality and centrality, circulation and calm, abandonment and limelight, indigence and affluence, spleen and euphoria. After introducing our theoretical focus on the problem of “urban commons” and the qualitative methodology used in the article, we describe the historical process that led to the transformation of Lisbon: from the Expo’98 megaevent when Lisbon was a peripheral tourism destiny, to the present urban economy that is specialized in tourism and services. We will focus especially in the top-down projects and policies developed during those years and the use of 2008 financial crisis to liberalize many aspects of economy