This study examines regional variation in the returns to quality signals in the German wine industry. Utilizing signaling theory, we investigate whether the price premiums associated with producer reputation and sustainable production methods vary across regional quality contexts. Using 51,069 wine observations from the Gault Millau guide from 2010 to 2017), covering 1,396 wineries, we classify Germany's major wine regions into high-, medium-, and low-quality clusters based on yield per hectare and the density of elite association memberships. Hedonic price regressions reveal that individual reputation commands significant premiums across all contexts. However, sustainability signals, such as organic and biodynamic production, yield meaningful price premiums only in low-quality regions. In high-quality regions where collective reputation is strong, sustainability certifications provide limited incremental value. These findings suggest that optimal signaling strategies are context-dependent: in established high-quality environments, producers benefit most from individual reputation building and elite association membership, whereas in regions with weaker collective reputation, sustainability certification offers an effective differentiation mechanism. Our results extend signaling theory by demonstrating that signal effectiveness depends on both production costs and the information environment in which signals are deployed. We acknowledge that our sample comprises guide-selected wines, representing a quality-filtered subset, and our findings should be interpreted accordingly.

Using data from professional football leagues in four countries, we assess the effects on team performances following head coach turnover, distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary exits. We use entropy balancing to deal with the endogeneity of coach departures, by reweighting pre-departure covariates to obtain a comparable control group. Results reveal little, if any, positive effect from either type of turnover, though some longer-term benefits are possible if teams experience no subsequent turnover. We discuss how these findings fit with previous literature and theory, and discuss the wider practical implications.

Research QuestionWe consider how elite European football clubs use available and measurable performance data to value personnel by focussing on the goalkeeper labour market. We test the determinants of goalkeeper pay and discuss if football clubs effectively separate goalkeeper performances from outfield players.Research MethodsMatching an exclusive salary dataset with rich performance measures, we estimate a Mincer-type salary model for a sample of 260 goalkeepers from five European football leagues (Premier League, Ligue 1, Bundesliga 1, Serie A and La Liga). Our dataset covers seven seasons from 2013/14 to 2019/20.Results and FindingsWe find that clubs use primitive defensive statistics to determine goalkeeper pay. Goalkeepers are paid based on co-production and team outcomes rather than individual workload. Also features of goalkeeper ball distribution positively affect salary - this indicates the importance of goalkeepers to initiating offensive moves.ImplicationsOur evidence suggests that decision-makers within clubs are not optimally decoupling individual performance from team qualities. As such, clubs could improve how they value a key team member. Identifying the failure to use advanced statistics is especially important as forming contracts in this setting is costly.

This article summarises the research findings of papers published in Journal of Sports Economics on the workings of professional sports labor markets. The article covers three main themes: pay and performance, discrimination, and player mobility. The review shows what scholars have found so far and point out various gaps that researchers can fill in future work. Keywords players , pay , performance , discrimination , mobility

This paper examines whether workers are rewarded for inconsistent performances by salary premia. Some earlier research suggests that performance inconsistency leads to salary premia while other research finds premia for consistent performances. Using detailed salary and performance data, we find that inconsistency is rewarded for some dimensions of performance, specifically those where creativity is important and outcomes have higher variance. We find salary penalties for inconsistent performances in those dimensions that are basic requirements of successful team production.

This article summarises the research findings of papers published in Journal of Sports Economics on the workings of professional sports labor markets. The article covers three main themes: pay and performance, discrimination, and player mobility. The review shows what scholars have found so far and point out various gaps that researchers can fill in future work.

This article investigates the impact of the 2007–9 Great Recession on attendance demand in the English Football League. We identify causal effects of variations in local unemployment rates on club matchday attendances using a difference-in-difference methodology applied to specific treatment and control group clubs categorized according to severity of local unemployment increase during the recession period. We find that treatment clubs in Tiers 3 and 4 suffered an attendance reduction of 10.5% purely through rising unemployment in local Travel to Work Areas containing clubs’ stadia after controlling for a large set of confounding influences. Smaller but still significant effects are found in alternative specifications, including the incorporation of Tier 2 clubs into the analysis.

This chapter investigates the potential threat to gate attendances from live television broadcasting. We will focus on impacts of live broadcasting on gate attendances at English Football League games. The English Football League (EFL) has three divisions comprising 72 professional clubs below the English Premier League (EPL), each with promotion and relegation transitions. The three divisions have undergone many branding changes over time, so we will refer to these as Tier 2, Tier 3 and Tier 4 to indicate their status. Although the effects of live broadcasting on lower division attendances have been studied before (Buraimo et al., 2009; Forrest and Simmons, 2006; Wallrafen et al., 2019, 2020), there is now an extra reason to revisit this topic. In September 2018, live streaming of Football League matches took place alongside competing live transmissions of midweek UEFA Champions League games. Fans of Football League teams then faced three viewing alternatives: watch their favoured team by live stream, watch a Champions League game via BT Sport or attend the League game regardless. With two viewing alternatives rather than just one, the impact of live broadcasting on gate attendance for Football League teams could be substantial (Baker, 2018).

For decades, the annual numbers of exits of members from the Catholic Church and Protestant Church have been increasing. Closer inspection of diocese-level data shows that the time-series pattern of exits is nonlinear with a series of intermediate peaks. This paper uses an event study approach to model the impacts of various scandals on church exit rates. We find that sexual abuse and financial scandals located in the Catholic Church contribute to increased exit rates not just in that Church but also, by way of spillover effects, to higher exit rates of Protestant Church members.

For decades, the annual numbers of exits of members from the Catholic Church and Protestant Church have been increasing. Closer inspection of diocese-level data shows that the time-series pattern of exits is nonlinear with a series of intermediate peaks. This paper uses an event study approach to model the impacts of various scandals on church exit rates. We find that sexual abuse and financial scandals located in the Catholic Church contribute to increased exit rates not just in that Church but also, by way of spillover effects, to higher exit rates of Protestant Church members.

That football Head Coaches will be dismissed for poor performance and will quit when they have better outside options seems obvious. But owners may find it hard to distinguish poor performance from bad luck and may find it difficult to identify and attract talented Head Coaches from other clubs even if their current Head Coach is performing below expectations. Equally, Head Coaches may have few options to move to better clubs even when they are performing well. Using rich data on Head Coach characteristics we identify determinants of quits and dismissals across four professional football leagues over the period 2002–2015. We find that Head Coaches’ probabilities of dismissal are significantly lower when the team is performing above expectations, with the effect strongest for recent games. However, in contrast to earlier studies, we find that performing above expectations also reduces the probability of Head Coach quits. Head Coach success in the past, as well as Head Coach experience, reduce the probability of being dismissed, even when conditioning on team performance, suggesting Head Coach human capital has some ‘protective’ effect in managerial careers. Past experience has little effect on quit probabilities—with the exception of tenure at the current employer, which is associated with lower quit rates. We test the robustness of our results by confining estimates to first exits, within-season departures and by dealing with unobserved Head Coach heterogeneity.

Michael Lewis's best-selling book, Moneyball, demonstrated the efforts of Oakland A's General Manager, Billy Beane, to create a successful baseball team in spite of its location in a small market. Previous studies have argued that the salary returns to the neglected skill of on base percentage (OBP) should rise once the Oakland A's hitters demonstrated proficiency with this skill. Our key result is that after Moneyball was published in 2003, hitter salaries for free agents signing new contracts were not more closely related to OBP. Consistent with efficiency, we find no long-term change in valuation in OBP. In contrast, we do find evidence of a rise in salary returns to productivity in the form of bases per hit ('power hitting') but this again is consistent with efficient market adjustment. In sum, it appears the labor market for hitters in baseball was efficient both before and after the appearance of Moneyball.

Based on the Calciopoli scandal, which uncovered widespread corruption in Italian football, this paper quantifies the effect of referee bias on the performance of football teams. The impartiality of referees is often distorted by external factors which exert some emotional pressure in order to influence their decisions. On the other hand, corrupt referees consciously and deliberately try to distort the results of the sport contest, in order to favor the corrupting teams. Building on the implications of a model where performance in a sport contest depends on both effort and bribing, our results highlight the different effects of these two forms of bias, and help to shed light on several aspects of the corruption scandal.

In Germany, exits from the Catholic and Protestant churches have fluctuated considerably over the last 60 years. Much of the observable variation in these exits can be explained by exogenous shocks such as unpopular encyclicals by the Pope, German reunification, sexual abuse cases and financial scandals.

We demonstrate that a utility maximizing individual with an everywhere concave utility function may optimally wager on two or more outcomes in an event even though the expected returns to a unit stake are negative on all outcomes except one.

We analyse how a change in the probability of winning a tournament affects an agent's effort using the qualification rules for entry into the group and playoff stages of the UEFA Champions' League. Our results suggest that increasing the number of slots that a national league gets in the Champions' League leads to increases in investment in talent ex ante. This effect is largest among the teams that in the previous season just failed to qualify. This suggests that changes in prize structure leads to changes in investment decisions amongst those clubs most affected at the margin. However, we also find that incumbent teams that have already qualified for the Champions' League simultaneously raise their efforts, consistent with the occurrence of an arms race among top European football teams.

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Peter Sloane’s seminal article in this journal on the objectives of football clubs argued that utility maximising clubs would seek out player talent more aggressively than profit maximising clubs and that this accumulation of player talent by larger teams might need to be checked by redistribution of revenues. We suggest in this article that, in a context of rising revenues and high rewards, the pressures to acquire more and better talent so as to out-perform other teams on the football pitch leads to a requirement for teams to practise effective contract management. Using a large dataset from the German Bundesliga, we find that players with longer term contracts perform better, ceteris paribus. Hence, selection effects in the award of long-term contracts dominate moral hazard (shirking) effects in the Bundesliga.

Peter Sloane's seminal article in this journal on the objectives of football clubs argued that utility maximising clubs would seek out player talent more aggressively than profit maximising clubs and that this accumulation of player talent by larger teams might need to be checked by redistribution of revenues. We suggest in this article that, in a context of rising revenues and high rewards, the pressures to acquire more and better talent so as to out-perform other teams on the football pitch leads to a requirement for teams to practise effective contract management. Using a large dataset from the German Bundesliga, we find that players with longer term contracts perform better, ceteris paribus. Hence, selection effects in the award of long-term contracts dominate moral hazard (shirking) effects in the Bundesliga.