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Published 1974 | public
Book Section - Chapter

The economic theory of a professional sports league

Abstract

This chapter applies economic theory to the analysis of the business operations of a professional sports league. Special emphasis is given to the implications of the player reservation system-the rules structure for the distribution of playing strengths among the teams in a league-since partisans of professional sports claim that this system is essential to the goal of "equalizing competitive playing strengths" among teams.

Additional Information

© 1974 by the Brookings Institution. The results presented here are extensions of those reported in an earlier paper, Mohamed El Hodiri and James Quirk, "An Economic Model of a Professional Sports," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 79 (November-December 1971), pp. 1302-19, which in turn was stimulated by the pioneering work of Simon Rottenberg (see "The Baseball Players' Labor Market," ibid., Vol. 64 [June 1956], pp. 242-58). Formerly Social Science Working Paper 1. Entitled "On the Economic Theory of Professional Sports League" in SSWP.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023