Thesis advisor: Christopher Maxwell / Although there is extensive theoretical and empirical literature discussing the impact of revenue sharing agreements on competitive balance in professional sports leagues, there has been little work done to improve the structure of current agreements which are designed to improve competitive balance. This paper focuses on the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the current revenue sharing agreements it has in place. This paper both evaluates franchises’ efforts in earning revenue sharing payments and offers alternative metrics designed to accomplish the goals of league-wide profitability and competitive balance. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.

The empirical literature on mergers, market power and collusion in differentiated markets has mainly focused on methods relying on output and/or panel data. In contrast to this literature we suggest a novel approach that allows for the detection of collusive behavior among a group of firms making use of information on the spatial structure of horizontally differentiated products. By estimating best response functions using a spatial econometrics approach, we focus on differences in the strategic interaction in pricing between different groups of firms as well as on differences in price levels. We apply our method to the market for ski lift tickets using a unique data set on ticket prices and detailed resort-specific characteristics covering all ski resorts in Austria. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series