Rottenberg and the Economics of Sport after 50 years: An Evaluation

Simon Rottenberg’s seminal 1956 article in the Journal of Political Economy, 1956, is generally accepted as the starting point for the development of the economics of sport. While he recognised that certain features of professional sports leagues were unusual he saw little reason to treat this industry any differently from a conventional industry. He discusses the importance of uncertainty of outcome, the monopsonistic nature of the labour market, the nature of the product and demand (attendances). He considers alternatives to the reserve clause, such as equal revenue sharing, maximum salary limits, equal market franchise distribution and roster limits. Each of these is rejected in favour of a free market solution which, on the basis of the invariance principle, he suggests will perform just as well as the reserve clause in allocating talent to where it is most productive. The ensuing literature has focused on all these issues, many of which have created considerable debate amongst sports economists. In particular the assumption of profit maximisation has been challenged and a divergence of views, reflected in the so-called North American and European models of sports leagues has emerged. Over the last 50 years sports leagues have expanded, TV markets have opened up and legal challenges to existing practices have multiplied. This paper seeks to evaluate Rottenberg’s contribution to a rapidly expanding field and to judge its relevance today.Sport, Monopsony, Monopoly Power

Trademark Vigilance in the Twenty-First Century: An Update

The trademark laws impose a duty upon brand owners to be vigilant in policing their marks, lest they be subject to the defense of laches, a reduced scope of protection, or even death by genericide. Before the millennium, it was relatively manageable for brand owners to police the retail marketplace for infringements and counterfeits. The Internet changed everything. In ways unforeseen, the Internet has unleashed a tremendously damaging cataclysm upon brands—online counterfeiting. It has created a virtual pipeline directly from factories in China to the American consumer shopping from home or work. The very online platforms that make Internet shopping so convenient, and that have enabled brands to expand their sales, have exposed buyers to unwittingly purchasing fake goods which can jeopardize their health and safety as well as brand reputation. This Article updates a 1999 panel discussion titled Trademark Vigilance in the Twenty-First Century, held at Fordham Law School, and explains all the ways in which vigilance has changed since the Internet has become an inescapable feature of everyday life. It provides trademark owners with a road map for monitoring brand abuse online and solutions for taking action against infringers, counterfeiters and others who threaten to undermine brand value

Labour Market Mismatch Among UK Graduates: An Analysis Using REFLEX Data

There is much disagreement in the literature over the extent to which graduates are mismatched in the labour market and the reasons for this. In this paper we utilise the Flexible Professional in the Knowledge Society (REFLEX) data set to cast light on these issues, based on data for UK graduates. REFLEX examines the labour market status of graduates five years after graduation and distinguishes between first and current job, vertical and horizontal mismatch, over/underqualification and over/underskilling as well as including a range of questions on the nature of work organisation and individual competences. We find substantial pay penalties for over-education for both sexes and for overskilling in the case of men only. When both education and skill mismatch variables are included together in the model only overskilling reduces job satisfaction consistently for both sexes. Using job attributes data it appears that the lower wages of the overqualified may in part simply represent a compensating wage differential for positive job attributes, while for men at least there are real costs to being overskilled.skills, education, job matching, graduates

N=2\mathcal{N}=2 dilaton-Weyl multiplets in 5D and Nishino-Rajpoot supergravity off-shell

We describe in detail the derivation of a superconformal off-shell formulation of the alternative $\mathcal{N}=2$, $d=5$ ungauged supergravity of Nishino and Rajpoot, coupled to $n$ Abelian vector multiplets, using a general dilaton-Weyl multiplet. We generalize the vector multiplet coupling available in the literature and show under which assumptions that the scalar manifold reduces to the known case of SO(1,1) $\times$ SO(1,n)/SO(n). As an application of the formalism we propose generalized vector multiplet coupled higher curvature terms, whose construction we sketch briefly.Comment: v2 1+35 pages. more references, fewer typos. To appear in JHE

Disability and Skill Mismatch

This paper integrates two strands of literature on overskilling and disability using the 2004 British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS). It finds that the disabled are significantly more likely to be mismatched in the labour market, to suffer from a pay penalty and to have lower job satisfaction, the effects being stronger for the work-limited disabled. Giving workers more discretion over how they perform their work would significantly reduce these negative effects.skills, disability, job matching, earnings, job satisfaction

Are married women spatially constrained? A test of gender differentials in labour market outcomes

Numerous studies have shown that females fare less well than males in terms of relative earnings and occupational attainment, but few acknowledge the role played by differential gender migration patterns. This paper examines the relationship between marital status, spatial migration and various aspects of female labour market outcomes. It builds on the existing literature by analysing the issue for the first time using British data and focuses particularly on the possibility of constrained migration resulting in overeducation. Our research utilises the only British dataset - the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (SCELI) dataset - that allows the measurement of overeducation alongside other dimensions of labour market outcomes.

Crossing the Tracks? More on Trends in the Training of Male and Female Workers in Great Britain

A small number of recent empirical studies for several countries has reported the intriguing finding that the ‘advantage’ previously enjoyed by men in respect of training incidence and reported in earlier work in the literature has been reversed. The present paper explores the sources of the gender differential in training incidence using Labour Force Survey data, updating previous U.K. studies and providing further insights into the above phenomenon. The results suggest that the greater part of the ‘gap’ typically relates to differences in characteristics, among which the most important relate to occupation, industry and sector (public/private).

Back to Basics: A New Look at Gate-revenue Sharing and Competitive Balance

Most models with profit maximizing teams conclude that competitive balance is unchanged or reduced in response to gate sharing. We critique these models and then develop three alternatives: adding unshared post-season revenue; modelling the largest market team as a dominant firm with a rising marginal cost of talent; and a new general model that incorporates both a consumer demand for athletic talent and close competition. All three approaches can cause gate sharing to increase competitive balance.Sport, Monopsony, Monopoly Power

Spinorial geometry, off-shell Killing spinor identities and higher derivative 5D supergravities

Killing spinor identities relate components of equations of motion to each other for supersymmetric backgrounds. The only input required is the field content and the supersymmetry transformations of the fields, as long as an on-shell supersymmetrization of the action without additional fields exists. If we consider off-shell supersymmetry it is clear that the same relations will occur between components of the equations of motion independently of the specific action considered, in particular the Killing spinor identities can be derived for arbitrary, including higher derivative, supergravities, with a specified matter content. We give the Killing spinor identities for five-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ ungauged supergravities coupled to Abelian vector multiplets, and then using spinorial geometry techniques so that we have explicit representatives for the spinors, we discuss the particular case of the time-like class of solutions to theories with perturbative corrections at the four derivative level. We also discuss the maximally supersymmetric solutions in the general off-shell case.Comment: 62 pages v2: fewer typos, and a few improvements in the text kindly suggested by a refere