426 Pages 117 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The sports industry provides a seemingly endless set of examples from every area of microeconomics, giving students the opportunity to study economics in a context that holds their interest. Thoroughly updated to reflect the current sports landscape, The Economics of Sports introduces core economic concepts and theories and applies them to American and international sports.

    Updates for this sixth edition include:

    • More coverage of international sports, including European football;
    • A revised chapter on competitive balance, reflecting new techniques;
    • A brand-new chapter on mega-events such as the Olympics and World Cup;
    • New material on umpire bias;
    • A completely redesigned chapter on amateur competition that focuses exclusively on intercollegiate sports. This chapter is also now modular, enabling instructors who wish to intersperse it with the other chapters to do so with greater ease.

    This accessible text is supported by a companion website which includes resources for students and instructors. It is the perfect text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on sports economics.

    Part I: Introduction and Review of Economic Concepts

    1. Economics and Sports

    2. Review of the Economist’s Arsenal

    Part II: The Industrial Organization of Sports

    3. Sports Leagues and Franchises

    4. Monopoly and Antitrust

    5. Competitive Balance

    Part III: Public Finance and Sports

    6. The Public Finance of Sports: Who Benefits and How?

    7. The Public Finance of Sports: Who Pays and Why?

    8. Mega-Events

    Part IV: The Labor Economics of Sports

    9. An Introduction to Labor Markets in Professional Sports

    10. Labor Market Imperfections

    11. Discrimination

    Part V: Sports in the Not-for-Profit Sector

    12. The Economics of Intercollegiate Sports

    Biography

    Michael A. Leeds is Professor and Department Chair of Economics at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA, and a research associate at IZA, USA. He has published numerous articles in labor economics and the economics of sports, and was co-editor of the Handbook on the Economics of Women in Sports. He has won departmental, college, and university awards for his teaching. From 2007 to 2009, he was an Assistant Dean at Temple University, Japan.

    Peter von Allmen is Professor at the Department of Economics, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA. He previously served as the president of the North American Association of Sports Economics, and his primary research area is sports economics, with a particular focus on compensation schemes, incentives, and monopsony power.

    Victor A. Matheson is Professor of Economics at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA. He is co-editor of the Journal of Sports Economics and has written over 80 journal articles and book chapters. In addition, he worked as a soccer referee for 30 years and has officiated matches in Major League Soccer as well as over 400 Division 1 college games.

    "Leeds, von Allmen and Matheson have written the most accessible, comprehensive and up-to-date text on sports economics. The Economics of Sports illustrates how economic theory and insights can be used to better understand the sports industry and how the institutions of the sports industry must be taken into account before applying economic theory. The sixth edition incorporates new literature and new data that provide an accurate and important description of the state of the field."

    – Andrew Zimbalist, Chair, Department of Economics, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College Massachusetts