REVENUE SHARING IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS LEAGUES

We employ a model of n heterogenous profit-maximizing clubs to analyze the impact of revenue sharing in professional sports leagues on competitive balance. Revenues of each club depend on absolute quality, relative quality and on competitive balance itself so that our model captures much of the preceding literature as special cases. We show that revenue sharing always increases competitive balance if clubs differ only with respect to the impact of absolute quality on revenues. On the contrary, revenue sharing reduces competitive balance if only clubs' relative qualities play a role for revenues or if only two teams are considered.     

BROADCASTING AND TEAM SPORTS

Television rights are the largest component of revenues for major sports in large, rich nations. Among these nations, the market structure for rights varies due to different competition policies toward sports and television. This essay examines how game coverage, revenues, and competitive balance are affected by competition in commercial television and sales of rights. It argues that consumers are better off if television is competitive and leagues do not centralize rights sales. We conclude that centralization of rights sales does not improve competitive balance or benefit financially weak teams. Finally, while digital telecommunications are making television competitive, ending centralization of sales by leagues requires policy intervention.     

REVENUE DIVERGENCE AND COMPETITIVE BALANCE IN A DIVISIONAL SPORTS LEAGUE

The North American model of resource allocation in professional sports leagues is adapted for English (association) football. Comparisons are drawn between the equilibrium allocations of playing talent under objective functions of profit maximisation and win percent maximisation subject to a financial constraint. Empirical revenue functions are reported for 1926–1999. These indicate a shift in the composition of demand favouring big‐city teams and an increase in the sensitivity of revenue to performance. An analysis of match results in the FA Cup suggests an increase in competitive imbalance between teams at different levels of the league's divisional hierarchy, as the theory suggests.     

青藏铁路沿线旅游资源“点—轴”开发模式研究

在分析青海省和西藏自治区旅游资源的空间分布特点及旅游开发空间布局现状的基础上,提出以"点-轴"系统理论为指导,构建青藏两省区旅游业资源"点-轴"开发模式.     

A MODEL OF VOTER CHOICE IN A LIFE-CYCLE SETTING

This paper employs an overlapping generations framework in which voters choose political parties based on the economic shocks faced over their lifetimes. Parties internalize voting preferences and develop platforms based on this information. The resulting equilibrium implies that voters select parties that maximize income in their labor period and that minimize inflation in their retirement period. The equilibrium also has the property that individuals switch their votes between the parties, in the presence of adverse states of nature. These results provide an explanation for post World War II voting patterns in the United States. The paper also provides empirical support for the theoretical findings.     

MISPERCEPTIONS AND MONETARY POLICY IN A NEW-KEYNESIAN MODEL

This paper studies the consequences for the monetary policy design of information shortages on the part of the private sector. We model these shortages as exogenous shocks to expected income, which through an IS curve, disturb aggregate demand. We constrain policymakers to follow Taylor‐like rules but allow them to optimise coefficients: we find that the presence of misperceptions makes the optimised Taylor rule respond more aggressively to inflation and the output gap. We also find that if the policymaker is uncertain about misperceptions, then it is less costly to assume they are pervasive when they are not than the reverse. In other words, setting policy on the basis that the private sector is subject to misperceptions is a ‘robust’ policy.     

CYCLICAL SHOCKS IN A MODEL OF EQUILIBRIUM UNEMPLOYMENT

The paper shows a model which displays a procyclical movement of job creation as a rational expectations equilibrium.     

TARIFF FORMATION IN A MULTIDIMENSIONAL VOTING MODEL*

The theory of endogenous trade policy formation argues that tariffs emerge from the political process. This occurs because of conflicting economic interests trying to redistribute income in their favor through the adoption of suitable trade policies. Mayer and Riezman (1987) questioned this view arguing that if individuals differ only in factor ownership they would always prefer some tax/subsidy policy to tariffs. Here we allow individuals to differ not only with respect to factor ownership, but also with respect to consumption preferences and income tax treatment. We show that tariffs might be the social decision even though nobody's individual preferences suggest tariffs as the best choice.     

SEARCH EXTERNALITIES IN MACROECONOMIC THEORY

The paper gives a survey of the basic features of macroeconomic models with search externalities. It presents a simple static general equilibrium model with search externalities. Within this context the main results characterizing steady state in dynamic search models are reproduced in a simple context. Specifically, the link between transaction technology and strategic complementarity is analysed. It is shown that increasing returns to scale in the transaction technology create feed-back effects and multiple, Pareto-ranked equilibria may arise. With economies of scale in matching, fluctuations in the economy can be large even with a low elasticity of search activity. The formal equivalence to models with investment externalities is analysed. In an application to the labour market, the allocative role of wages in the presence of search frictions and hysteresis effects are discussed. General conditions are given under which the set of welfare ranked equilibria is described by a closed loop. Finally, it is shown that with a more general transaction technology, even with constant returns to scale multiple equilibria may occur in the presence of externalities.     

传统贸易理论、新贸易理论和新经济地理框架下的产业集聚现象

文章使用传统贸易理论、新贸易理论和新经济地理的分析框架讨论了产业集聚现象的影响因素,并利用1999-2003年省级面板数据研究了导致中国地区产业集聚的因素.发现:①比较优势仍是产业集聚形成的前提;②产业一旦在特定区域形成集聚现象,规模经济效应的存在,会促进这种集聚趋势进一步增强;③打破地方贸易保护障碍,建立全国统一大市场,有助于区域的专业化发展.     

城市高尔夫:一种不受拘束的运动方式

提到贵族生活方式，我们不禁会想到沙龙，击剑，古堡，高尔夫，还有辽阔的马场，盛大的宫廷舞会……，这些贵族生活符号，为我们勾勒出遥远的贵族生活场景和风貌。     

PROMISE KEEPING IN THE GREAT SOCIETY: A MODEL OF CREDIT INFORMATION SHARING

Reputation is possible in a small community, but in the Smith-Lippmann-Hayekian Great Society people are mainly strangers. I model credit reporting as a system of formalized and surgically-precise gossip. In the Great Society credit reporting makes possible reputations, which make possible credit relationships. But forming a credit reporting system is no simple matter. Historically it has been local gossip in the small community that has made possible credit reporting "gossip" in the Great Society.     

CONTROVERSIES IN THE THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT

The guarded and undogmatic attitude of the best economists hasnot prevailed against the general opinion that an individualisticlaissez-faire is both what they ought to teach and what in factthey do teach (J. M. Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire, 1926)     

THE PARTISAN MODEL OF MACROECONOMIC CYCLES: MORE THEORY AND EVIDENCE FOR THE UNITED STATES*

The “Partisan Theory” of macroeconomic policy is based on the idea that political parties typically weight nominal and real economic performance differently, with left-party governments being more inclined than right-party ones to pursue expansive policies designed to yield lower unemployment and higher growth, but running the risk of extra inflation. Given suitable assumptions about the structure of the macroeconomy, partisan models imply a political signal in demand management, output and inflation movements originating with shifts in party control of the government. In this paper I develop and test with postwar US data a revised Partisan model that allows for (i) uncertainty among policy authorities about the sustainable output growth rate and therefore about how aggregate demand expansions will be partitioned between extra output and extra inflation, and (ii) ex-post and projective learning and preference adjustment under such uncertainty. Dynamic numerical analysis of a small, stylized political-economic model based on these extensions of Partisan Theory generates within-sample forecasts that correspond remarkably well to the observed pattern of price, output and nominal spending fluctuations under the parties.     

COMPETITIVE GROWTH IN A LIFE‐CYCLE MODEL: EXISTENCE AND DYNAMICS*

The dynamic behavior of the capital growth rate is analyzed using an overlapping‐generations model with continuous trading. Assuming a technology satisfying constant social returns to capital, the equilibrium growth rate is piecewise‐defined by functional differential equations with both delayed and advanced terms. The main result concerns the existence of a solution expressed as a series of exponentials, which is shown to crucially depend on the initial wealth distribution among cohorts. Upon existence, the dynamics of the capital growth rate has a saddle‐point trajectory that converges to a unique steady state. Along the transition path, the growth rate exhibits exponentially decreasing oscillations.     

EXCHANGE RISK IN THE EMS: SOME EVIDENCE BASED ON A GARCH MODEL*

The paper attempts to detect any changes in the exchange risk as measured by the conditional variance of exchange rate changes before and after foundation of the EMS. The analysis is based on estimation of an econometric model in which the conditional variance is allowed to follow an autoregressive pattern. The results indicate a significant decrease in the volatility of the conditional variance and the risk premium for the EMS countries over the EMS period. No such changes are detected for the non-EMS countries.