Football legends

On the occasion of the All Ireland Football Final between Dublin and another team as well as the Premiership match between Manchester United (19 times champions, don't you know) and some crowd from London, it is worth revisiting some of the economics of football:

Team performance: the case of English Premiership football
Carmichael, Thomas & Ward, Managerial & Decision Economics 2000
Sporting production function studies have been almost entirely US based concentrating largely, although not exclusively, on baseball. Mainly due to a dearth of match play statistics, there have been few studies of other sports, with that of association football being a significant omission given the sport's international appeal and global coverage. This study attempts to redress the balance by utilizing a new data source, containing information on a range of specific play variables, to estimate a production function for English Premiership football. Our results emphasize the key attacking and defensive skills, and provide support for the notion that teams may intentionally employ dubious or illegal tactics to succeed. The inclusion of team effects provides evidence consistent with the view of the emergence of an elite group of clubs dominating the league.

Tiger, Tiger burning bright?

Even if, like me, you are not that interested in golf you may be aware of Tiger Woods' stuttering return to form after his recent break from the game. Rory McIlroy caused something of a stir because of remarks to the effect that players aren't so intimidated by the once all conquering player. A catty remark? Well, it turns out that there is econometric evidence to support this. It would be interesting to know whether this result generalizes to other domains. For example, in academia, does the presense of a "superstar" cause people to raise or lower their game?

Quitters Never Win: The (Adverse) Incentive Effects of Competing with Superstars
Jennifer Brown
Managers use internal competition to motivate worker effort, yet economic theory suggests that the benefits of competition may depend critically on workers relative abilities- large differences in skill may reduce competitors efforts. This paper uses panel data from professional golfers and finds that the presence of a superstar in a rank-order tournament is associated with lower competitor performance. On average, higher- skill PGA golfers first-round scores are approximately 0.2 strokes higher when Tiger Woods participates, relative to when Woods is absent. The overall superstar effect for tournaments is approximately 0.8 strokes.
The adverse superstar effect increases when Woods is playing well and disappears during Woods' weaker periods. There is no evidence that reduced performance is due to "riskier" play.

Optimal tax theory & Wayne Rooney

This paper in a leading theoretical public finance journal argues cogently that "superstars" like Wayne Rooney earn rents which can and should be taxed away by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, m'lud. An interesting proposition indeed, although whether this has any implications for tax policy in Ireland where, happily, there are not many superstars is doubtful.

Research on Football

Fans of football research or even just of football may be interested to know that the April issue of the Journal of Economic Psychology [ vol 31, no. 2] is devoted to the economics of football. There are lots of interesting articles in it on such topics as the advantage gained by home teams, the pricing of World Cup tickets and the effect of talent disparity on team productivity.
Details of one of the papers is below:

National well-being and international sports events
Georgios Kavetsos, Stefan Szymanski

The widely proclaimed economic benefits of hosting major sporting events have received substantial criticism by academic economists and have been shown to be negligible, at best. The aim of this paper is to formally examine the existence of another potential impact: national well-being or the so-called “feelgood” factor. Using data on self-reported life satisfaction for twelve European countries we test for the impact of hosting and of national athletic success on happiness. Our data covers three different major events: the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship. We find that the “feelgood” factor associated with hosting football events is large and significant, but that the impact of national athletic success on happiness, while correctly signed, is statistically insignificant.

Returns to footedness

Its good to see that economists' continuing interest in laterality. This paper does not investigate left vs. right-footedness but measures the benefit of being "two-footed". Some work of mine (Neuropsychologia , 2008, 2091-2094) shows how ambidexterity conveys certain cognitive advantages.

The returns to scarce talent: footedness and player remuneration in European soccer

Alex Bryson, Bernd Frick and Rob Simmons, CEP Paper No CEPDP0948

Abstract: We investigate the salary returns to the ability to play football with both feet. The majority of footballers are predominantly right footed. Using two data sets, a cross-section of footballers in the five main European leagues and a panel of players in the German Bundesliga, we find robust evidence of a substantial salary premium for two-footed ability, even after controlling for available player performance measures. We assess how this premium varies across the salary distribution and by player position.

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=3465

Crime, punishment ,rugby

A key issue in modeling crime is whether imprisonment works in reducing crime and, if so, is it through the incarceration effect (they are banged up so can't commit further crimes) or through deterrence (they are put off crime post-imprisonment) ? The distinction is important because prisons are very expensive in general (& certainly in Ireland). Separating the two effects empirically is tricky.
A similar issue arises presumably with punishing misbehaviour in sport. Does red-carding someone work and, if so, how? Looking at the organized violence called rugby suggests that if there is an effect it is incarceration. If you gouge someone's eyes during a Lions match, a rational person must realize there is a strong chance of being caught. Likewise, Eric Cantona's assault on a fan looked pretty impulsive.

I havn't been able to find much research but this looks relevant:

"Crime, Punishment, and Recidivism Lessons From the National Hockey League"
W. David Allen
Among the fundamental elements of the sport of ice hockey are the on-ice rules violations occasionally committed by players and the penalties assessed for those violations. During the 1998-99 season, the National Hockey League (NHL) for the first time experimented with the deployment of two on-ice referees for a selection of games instead of the customary single referee, significant in that only referees have the authority to call penalties. In this article, that experimental 1998-99 season provides the empirical setting for a test of the economic model of crime, which suggests that economic agents allocate time to legal and illegal activity by considering the benefits and costs of these activities. Here, those economic agents are NHL players. Empirically, relatively nonviolent illegal activity appears significantly influenced by benefits and costs, but particularly violent acts appear to occur more randomly. Particularly violent penalties increase when a second referee is deployed, suggesting a dominant "apprehension effect" rather than a dominant "deterrence effect" of what amounts to an increase in the presence of police.
Journal of Sports Economics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 39-60 (2002)