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on Sports and Economics |
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Issue of 2009‒11‒07
three papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre and Technical University of Lisbon |
| By: | Oberhofer, Harald (Universität Salzburg, Fachbereich Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften); Philippovich, Tassilo (Universität Innsbruck, Institut für Finanzwissenschaft); Winner, Hannes (Universität Salzburg, Fachbereich Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses the role of distance in professional team sports, taking the example of football (soccer). We argue that a team’s performance in terms of scored and conceded goals decreases with the distance to the foreign playing venue. To test this hypothesis empirically, we investigate 6,389 away games from the German Football Premier League (’Erste Deutsche Bundesliga’) between the playing seasons 1986-87 and 2006-07. We find that distance increases a guest team’s propensity to concede goals and exhibits a negative but insignificant impact on the ability to score goals. The parameter estimates of the squared distance terms indicate that the effects of distance on team performance are non-monotonic. Further, focusing on the outcome of the game (i.e., win, draw or defeat) as a measure of the overall success of a football team we observe significantly negative effects of distance. |
| Keywords: | Professional team performance; distance; event count data; poisson regression model |
| JEL: | C29 L25 L83 |
| Date: | 2009–10–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:sbgwpe:2009_001&r=spo |
| By: | Raul Caruso (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano) |
| Abstract: | What is the broad impact of sport participation and sport activities in a society? The first aim of this paper is tackling this crucial point by studying whether or not there is a relationship between sport participation and crime. A panel dataset have been constructed for the twenty Italian regions over the period 1997-2003. The impact of spot participation on different type of crimes has been studied. Results show that: (i) there is a robust negative association between sport participation and property crime; (ii) There is a robust negative association between sport participation and juvenile crime; (iii) There is a positive association between sport participation and violent crime, but it is only weakly significant. |
| Keywords: | Sport participation, relational goods, crime, Kenneth Boulding |
| JEL: | L83 D62 |
| Date: | 2009–10–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qut:auncer:2009_60&r=spo |
| By: | Egon Franck (University of Zurich); Erwin Verbeek (University of Zurich); Stephan Nüesch (University of Zurich) |
| Abstract: | Unlike the existing literature on sports betting, which concentrates on arbitrage within a single market, this paper examines inter-market arbitrage by searching for arbitrage opportunities through combining bets at the bookmaker and the exchange market. Using the posted odds of eight different bookmakers and the corresponding odds traded at a well-known bet exchange for 5,478 football matches played in the top-five European leagues during three seasons, we find (only) ten intra-market arbitrage opportunities. However, we find 1,450 cases in which a combined bet at the bookmaker as well as at the exchange yields a guaranteed positive return. Further analyses reveal that inter-market arbitrage emerges from different levels of informational efficiency between the two markets. |
| Keywords: | sports betting, inter-market arbitrage |
| Date: | 2009–10–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qut:auncer:2009_61&r=spo |