I wrote a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter about economics for an English class of mine at Northwestern this past quarter and, spurred on by the rash of “Fed Valentines,” thought I’d take a decidedly Austrian approach. Now that the class is done, I figured that I should pass it along to some people who, unlike my English professor, would perhaps appreciate its economic aspects more than its rhythmic and metrical aspects.
The following is a guest post by David Berri, a Professor of Economics at Southern Utah University. He is also the lead author of Stumbling on Wins, the general manager of the sports-economics blog Wages of Wins, and is a frequent contributor to the Freakonomics blog.
Soon after presents are opened on Christmas morning, the NBA – after a lengthy lockout – will finally open its 2011-12 season with a slate of five games. Although NBA fans are pleased the lockout has ended, they’d probably prefer that it had never happened. Unfortunately for fans of pro sports in North America, such disputes frequently cause games to be missed. But maybe there is a free market solution to this problem to be found in, of all places, Europe.
Although we tend to think such disputes are a contest between labor and management, frequently the real conflict – as noted in my recent posts here — is between small and large market teams. In North American sports, team revenue seems to depend on the size of the market where the team plays.
Remember Round 1? Here now, the two economics heavyweights square off again, in spectacular rap-ified fashion: You can find more related material here. It is the co-creation of Russ Roberts, who you may remember making some provocative arguments in our “What Would the World Look Like If Economists Were in Charge?” podcast. And here‘s a Q&A with Roberts about the . . .
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