Team Payroll Versus Performance in Professional Sports: Is Increased Spending Associated with Greater Success?
by Grant Shorin Abstract Professional sports are a billion-dollar industry, with player salaries accounting for the largest expenditure. Comparing results between the four major North American leagues (MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL) and examining data from 1995 through 2015, this paper seeks to answer the following question: do teams that have higher payrolls achieve greater […]
Obesity and its Impact on Job Quality
By Kelly Lessard This study explores the relationship between body mass and job quality in the United States labor force using five variables to represent job quality: hourly wage, training in the past year, desire for training, expectations for success, and job satisfaction. I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data from 1994 to calculate BMI and assess the job quality […]
Gender Equality as a Result of Offering Employee Benefit Policies
By Meghan Mcaneny In this study, I investigate the relationship between the percentage of women in leadership in a company and its employee benefits. This paper uses data on individual firms’ benefits such as paid parental leave, familial support, and flexibility arrangements. Using OLS, I conclude that benefits that shift familial burdens from women to men, specifically paid paternity leave, result in more women in leadership. This creates an even playing field for women to be promoted as the company environment […]
Is the Blind Side Tackle Worth It?: An Analysis of the Salary Allocation of the NFL Offensive Line
By Kelly Froelich The importance of the left tackle position in comparison to the other offensive line positions in the National Football League (NFL) has been widely debated amongst sports commentators, as the left tackle is traditionally the second highest paid player on a football team behind the quarterback; yet, this debate lacks empirical findings. […]
Capturing a College Education’s Impact on Industry Wages Across Time: An Analysis of Academic Factors that Affect Earnings
By Ian Low Studying how a college education can impact one’s wages has always been an area of interest amongst labor and education economists. While previous studies have stressed using single academic factors (i.e. college major choice, performance, or college prestige) to determine the effect on wages, there has not been a focus on predicting […]
Incentives in Professional Tennis: Tournament Theory and Intangible Factors
By Steven Seidel and Joshua Silverman This paper analyzes the incentives of professional tennis players in a tournament setting, as a proxy for workers in a firm. Previous studies have asserted that workers exert more effort when monetary incentives are increased, and that effort is maximized when marginal pay dispersion varies directly with position in […]
The Marital Wage Premium in the Twenty-First Century: Do married men earn a higher wage rate, and if so, why?
By Hans F. Kist and Yanqi (Halley) Hu Married men have historically earned higher wages than single men. One of the most prominent explanations for this phenomenon is the theory of intra-household specialization. However, the marriage premium was found to be decreasing up until the early 90’s. In our paper, we have re-examined the wage […]
