Thesis advisor: Christopher Maxwell / Nike claims that their shoes, the Nike Vaporfly 4%'s, will make you 4% faster in your next marathon. This claim is evaluated by way of econometric analysis of large scale, publicly sourced data. This study seeks to prove whether or not Nike's claim is valid, and assess the implications of such technology in both competitive and amateur running. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

This dissertation consists of three essays exploring the labor market in Major League Baseball (MLB), as well as the negotiation environment for arbitration eligible players. Chapter 1 will show that the distribution of individual labor productivity has a significant effect on overall firm output. Results indicate that a firm with heterogeneous workers should consider not only the sum of individual contributions, but also how individual contributions are allocated, as increased concentration reduces overall output. Traditionally, salary dispersion acts as a proxy for ability dispersion. Past literature indicates that workers respond to disparity, though the literature is conflicting as to the direction of this response. In all cases, however, using salary as a proxy for worker production over-simplifies the firm's decision-making process. This chapter uses data from MLB to measure productivity concentration directly, independent of wage concentration. If workers act as complements to one another then the concentration of productivity will influence overall output in a way that is unrelated to the distribution of salaries. This analysis allows for workers’ behavioral response to wage, and the productivity effects of heterogeneous individual production levels, to be evaluated separately. The analysis could extend to any industry in which workers act as a team contributing a portion of a final product. These findings are particularly useful for industries, like MLB, in which varying degrees of monopsonistic power make wage a poor proxy for productivity.\\ Chapter 2 discusses Final Offer Interest Arbitration (FOA), a bargaining mechanism designed to promote private negotiation and, when necessary, resolve a negotiation impasse without a work stoppage. If parties cannot settle on mutually acceptable terms, they bring their proposed terms to an arbitrator. The arbitrator then rules in favor of one party. In a Final Offer system, the winning party's terms become the binding terms of the agreement. In order for FOA to be an effective mechanism, it should promote bargaining, meaning it is used relatively infrequently and, when used, its outcomes should resemble privately negotiated terms. Traditionally, both parties are given equal power to select the arbitrator who will hear the case. This veto power during the selection process should weed out any calculable or predicable favoring of one party over another, so an FOA system should not yield significantly different settlements from those that do not go to arbitration and are instead privately negotiated. This chapter explores the use of FOA in Major League Baseball. Different players face arbitration eligibility at points during their career, allowing for a side-by-side view of settlements with and without an FOA mechanism. Results indicate that FOA has succeeded in promoting bargaining, but that a bias against players lingers even as uncertainty dwindles. Chapter 3 is meant to complement chapter 2 by further exploring FOA. Arbitrators must maintain a degree of unpredictability in order to promote private negotiation. However, they also must be predictable enough that parties expect a "high-quality" ruling, meaning the outcome falls within a range that parties believe reflects privately negotiated decisions. I use data from Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) to explore the way teams learn from past decisions to reduce uncertainty surrounding arbitrator decisions. / Economics

Thesis advisor: Michael Grubb / This paper investigates the discount rates applied by NFL teams to future draft picks when engaging in trades during the annual NFL Draft. Utilizing a dataset of 353 draft pick trades from 2010 to 2024, the study employs a non-linear regression model to estimate the parameters of a Weibull distribution, which captures the value decay of draft picks over time. The model incorporates a discount factor to account for the devaluation of future picks. The results provide evidence of varying discount rates across the three days of the draft, with the highest rate of approximately 182% on Day 1, and lower rates of 53% and 97% on Day 2 and Day 3, respectively. These findings suggest that NFL teams place a greater premium on immediate returns when trading early round picks. The study contributes to the understanding of decision-making under uncertainty in high-stakes environments and offers insights into the strategic considerations and market dynamics of the NFL Draft. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics. / Discipline: Departmental Honors.

Thesis advisor: Christopher F. Baum / This paper seeks to estimate the impacts generated from the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Using a data set representing 76 metropolitan statistical areas in the western United States, and later 31 metropolitan statistical areas in Utah and its bordering neighbors, I construct an Arellano-Bond dynamic panel data regression that seeks to model metropolitan employment growth had the Olympics never taken place. With this logic I apply the Arellano- Bond regression to real personal income and real average wages, in a vector autoregression framework, estimating gains to those variables over a reasonable timeframe. The predictions from these variables are then compared to actual figures in which a picture of the economic impact of the 2002 Games is generated. Using out of sample predictions I estimate Salt Lake City's Olympic impact in employment is roughly between 20,487 and 36,150 job-years, between $ 381 and $ 2,470 to real per-capita personal income, and a decrease of $ 273 to $ 2004 in real average wages. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2006. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program.

This is the first paper to measure the efficiency of the Japan Professional Football League clubs both the first and the second divisions. In Chapter 1, a non-parametric method Data Envelopment Development (DEA) is used and the data covers six seasons from 2005 to 2010. The input variables are payroll, cost besides payroll, and total assets. The output variables are attendance, revenue, and points awarded. I use different output combinations in order to check the sensitivity of the efficiency of the clubs after the original composition. This is also the first research to include more than one division of the Professional Football League and hence, the promotion and relegation impact on the efficiency can be analyzed using unique data such as Tokyo Verdy 1969. Tokyo Verdy 1969 operated inefficiently in the second division because it spent so much on inputs hoping for promotion. It was efficient when in the first division. The results indicate that athletic rank in the league is not correlated with the efficiency scores. The efficient clubs in the second division are all ranked at the bottom in the league and this is because they have limited resource inputs, no expectation to promote, and because the expansion policy of the league precludes relegation. Chapter 2 is an extension of Chapter 1. In this chapter I check the exogenous factors impacting the efficiency scores but not involved in the DEA analysis as the input variables. I aim to estimate the relationship between the input-oriented DEA efficiency scores under the constant returns to scale assumption and use an exogenous variable ordinary least square (OLS) model to check the relationship between the efficiency scores and exogenous variables. I regress the DEA efficiency scores on all of the exogenous variables collected from various resources during the sample period. Chapter 3 estimates the productivity and efficiencies of the football clubs in Japan Professional Football League. This chapter is an extension of the first chapter. In this chapter I check the dynamic change of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) based on the calculation of the Malmquist Index, which consists of efficiency change and technical change between two time periods. Additionally, the production frontier used in this chapter was built by the non-parametric input-oriented CRS DEA approach as applied in the first chapter. Based on the results of the Malmquist Index, we find if the change in the TFP growth as increasing, declining or remaining the same.

This dissertation proposal examines empirically the determinants of Olympic performance and the transition and persistence of Major League Soccer (MLS). The first chapter estimates the relationship between the performance by a country at the Olympics, measured by number of medals obtained, and a country's health indicators. We want to examine the relationship that improved sanitation access has on Olympic performance. The data sources are from the Olympic Committee, World Development Indicators and various sources. A panel tobit estimation will be used to examine this relationship. The second chapter deals with the determinants of Major League Soccer teams' performance. We want to examine and estimate variables that improve the performance of MLS teams. The data sources are taken from Major League Soccer teams main pages, Bureau of Economic Analyis, Bureau of Labor Statistics and the United States Census Bureau. We will use a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation and instrumental variable (IV) estimation which assists us in controlling for observed endogeneity. The third chapter examines the competitive transition and persistence associated with Major League Soccer. A proportional hazard model and a multinomial logit model is used in this estimation to examine the ability of teams to remain competitive, where we explore the factors that assists teams in remaining in specific states of competitiveness.

Fältet sports economics har för det mesta nått konsensus att professionella idrottsklubbar kostar mer än vad det smakar. Det mesta av fältets slutsatser är dock anpassade till en amerikansk kontext. Pandemin i nuläget har även satt fokus på det ekonomiska läget för många av de svenska idrottsföreningarna. Därför undersöker den här uppsatsen ifall idrottsföreningar i SHL och Allsvenskan har externa effekter på en kommuns attraktivitet eller inkomster med hjälp av fixed effects på paneldata med Sveriges kommuner över perioden 2000–2019. Resultatet antyder att kommuner med SHL-föreningar har knappt 1% högre genomsnittlig nettoinkomst för dess invånare men inget starkt signifikant estimat finns för Allsvenska föreningar. Signifikansen för SHL-föreningarna blir klart svagare när kontroll för befolkningsmängd och storstadskommuner inkluderas. Inget signifikant estimat för kommunernas attraktion, mätt med nettoinflyttningar som andel av kommunens befolkningsmängd, finnes heller. / The field of sports economics has mostly reached a consensus that professional sports clubs cost more than it is worth. However, most of the field's conclusions are adapted in an American context. The current pandemic has also focused on the economic situation for many of the Swedish sports associations. Therefore, this thesis examines whether sports associations in the SHL and Allsvenskan have external effects on a municipality's attractiveness or income with the help of fixed effects on panel data with Sweden's municipalities over the period 2000–2019. The results suggest that municipalities with SHL associations have almost 1% higher average net income for its inhabitants, but there is no very significant estimate for Allsvenska associations. The significance for the SHL associations becomes clearly weaker when control for population and metropolitan municipalities are included. There is also no significant estimate of the municipalities' attraction, measured by net moving as a proportion of the municipality's population.

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From 1997 to 1999 and 2003 to the present, Major League Baseball has had a luxury tax on high payroll teams. This paper analyzes the impact of the tax as a budget constraint on teams’ ability to reward and retain high performing players. In contrast to other papers, we use wins above replacement (WAR), a popular sabermetrics statistic, to measure performance. Using this metric, we quantify the number of top performers, how this performance is rewarded with salary, and how salary impacts players’ mobility decisions. We conclude that when using WAR, the distribution of performance is not heavy tailed and rather follows an exponential distribution. Our results suggest that there are fewer top performers in periods with a luxury tax/budget constraint. We use efficiency wage theory to understand this decrease in top performers as the result of a decrease in motivators. We understand two different mechanisms of motivating performance: (1) under a stochastic budget constraint, managers did not choose to extend the contracts of top players; and (2) under a fixed budget constraint, managers decreased the monetary reward for an increase in performance. Both these mechanisms decrease the motivation for top talent to perform highly.

The economic value of sport has long been an interesting subject to study. Proponents arguing there is big monetary return for a region hosting a professional sports team. However, majority of studies done on the subject point in the same direction where it seems economic return are negligible. Researchers even argue there is rather an alternative cost where money could be better spent on other social structure such as education and health care. The value of sport creates both direct and indirect effect. In this essay I will look at whether there could be any indirect spillover effects from hosting a hockey team in the highest league. Due to its simplicity, a difference-in-difference (DiD) method will be used on municipalities hosting a hockey team. This when looking at Gross Regional Product (GRP), unemployment rate and population growth to municipalities without a hockey team. The results of this study are ambiguous and hard to interpret when sign on coefficient differ between variables and municipalities. However, there seem to be a correlation between lower unemployment rate and population growth and an increase in GRP when a team is qualifying to SHL. It cannot be determined whether this depend on economic growth or success of their professional sports team.