economics Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme screwed the Mets for years, dies in prison
Bernie Madoff tried to get clemency from Donald Trump in 2019, and last year asked to be released from prison because of kidney disease. He didn’t get the presidential get-out-of-jail-free card, and didn’t get the compassionate release, but Madoff is now off the hook for the remaining 138 years of h...
The Juiced Ball Is Going To Mess With MLB's Already Messed-Up Market
“Juiced” feels like the wrong word to describe what’s going on with the baseballs currently being put in play and mashed over fences in MLB. Not because what it’s describing isn’t real—it’s real all right—but because it makes it seem like the balls themselves have been injected with some kind of hom...
Baseball Owners Want An International Draft Because They Want Absolute Control
For North America’s amateur baseball players, be they generational talents like Mike Trout or organizational filler like Mike Fish, the road to the majors begins in the same place: with Major League Baseball’s amateur draft. There is no such system in place for international players, at least not ye...
Fixing MLB's Broken Economics Is About More Than Free Agency<em></em>
There have been a number of significant hints that MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association are headed for some very combative collective bargaining in 2021, but the two sides being willing to talk about economics ahead of schedule will stand out to anyone who has ever been through thi...
You Love Trucks. Do You Love People?
Donald Trump loves trucks, I guess. Also, the trucking industry is poised to be decimated by technological change. Here we have an opportunity. ...
Apocalypse Is The Only Path To Equality, Says The New Prophet Of Doom
Perhaps you imagine that enlightened lawmaking will bring our nation’s rampant inequality problem under control. History tells us the prognosis may be much, much more grim. We spoke to the author of one of the scariest books we have ever read. ...
Should Have Stuck With The Old Elites
After decades of growing inequality, our presidential election was a violent revolt against The Elites. So who the hell is actually trying to remedy that inequality frustrating our nation? The elites!...
We Need To Tax The Rich But Instead We'll Do The Opposite
Economic inequality in America has been rising steadily since the Reagan era. Why? A new research paper identifies what it say is the main culprit: the fact that we’ve stopped taxing the rich. ...
There's More To This Than Globalization
Many Americans today believe that global free trade is responsible for the wage stagnation and inequality that plagues the middle and lower classes. Is it? Not really....
We Are Losing The War On Inequality And It's Not Even Close
This decade has been the one in which the American mainstream finally realized we have a profound economic inequality problem. It is only now becoming clear just how far we are from turning this around. ...
It's Not Your Imagination, Rent Is Less Affordable Now
The rent: is it too damn high? A new economic research paper finds: it is....
Racism And Sexism Are Extremely Bad For The Economy
Over the past 50 years, our nation’s institutions have become less racist and less sexist. This decline in discrimination has been very good for America’s economy. ...
Let's Talk About MONOPSONY
In the wake of AT&T’s newly planned mega-merger with Time Warner, it’s a great time to discuss—what?—MONOPSONY, a funny word describing what happens when an employer has too much power in the marketplace. Sounds familiar......
You Have To Be Lucky To Be Rich
In 2007, Cornell economist Robert Frank wrote about President Barack Obama’s plan to let the Bush-era tax cuts for the country’s top earners lapse for the New York Times. He wrote that critics who complained that they had uniquely earned the money that would be taken away by stricter taxes were wron...
How The Spanish Economic Crisis Might Force Alberto Contador To Retire
Alberto Contador is the greatest stage racer of his generation. Even after getting stripped of the 2010 Tour de France and the 2011 Giro d’Italia, he has the fourth-most Grand Tour wins in cycling history, and he’s the third cyclist ever to win the Giro and the Vuelta a España in the same year. The ...
Introducing The Three-Point Line Benefited Big Men Most
After the NBA introduced the three-point line in 1979, it would have been be intuitive to assume that guards, who shot a disproportionate amount of the new and more efficient three-point shots, benefitted most from it. But a new study from the Journal of Sports Economics claims that after the three-...
The Competitive-Balance Argument Against Paying Athletes Is Bullshit
High on the list of myths thrown out as excuses to delay or prevent the advent of pay-for-play is that the price-fixing engaged in by the 351 schools in Division 1, and especially the now 128 schools in FBS who play football, is necessary to ensure competitive balance across the sport. ...
How Athletic Departments (And The Media) Fudge The Cost Of Scholarships
Paula Lavigne has an insightful piece on ESPN.com about how college sports thrived even as the rest of America suffered through a terrible economic downturn starting in late 2008. Paula is one of the best people writing in the mainstream sports press on money issues, and this piece is no exception. ...
Teams In The Orange Bowl Don't Make Any Money, And Other Lies
Originally published on Sportsgeekonomics....
Study: NFL Teams Have No Idea What They're Doing In The Draft
Today the Philadelphia Inquirer profiles Cade Massey, a professor at Penn's Wharton School of business. Already with a study under his belt arguing that the conventional wisdom of the Draft Value Chart is all wrong, Massey was contracted by an unnamed NFL team to study the history of the draft for m...