Description:
Shared use of grounds allowed Australian cricket and football to subsidize each other, but cartel arrangements that determined the use of stadiums and the distribution of benefits and costs between sports may have been less than optimal. Estimation of deadweight losses from the use of stadiums is not possible in the absence of a counterfactual specifying the level of demand if the behaviour of cartel members had been coordinated more effectively. Archival, financial and attendance report data can be used to estimate increases in actual demand under alternative scenarios. In Melbourne and Adelaide, the controlling bodies of cricket and football uncured significant losses in welfare from joint use of their cities’ major stadium, due to the importance they attached to non-monetary aspects of utility.
Description:
Sports teams that seek to maximise the number of wins, rather than profits, may not comply with league labour market regulations that compress payroll structures to promote even competition. This strategic behaviour depends on others, as teams choose a strategy to create team incentives, to which rivals will respond. A case study of four teams in a semi-professional Australian Rules football league tests the effectiveness of strategies to evade these regulations on winning percentages. Both compliance and non-compliance within this labour market regulation regime, based on different wage structures and talent distribution, were effective strategies to improve team performance.
Description:
Sports teams that seek to maximise the number of wins, rather than profits, may not comply with league labour market regulations that compress payroll structures to promote even competition. This strategic behaviour depends on others, as teams choose a strategy to create team incentives, to which rivals will respond. A case study of four teams in a semi-professional Australian Rules football league tests the effectiveness of strategies to evade these regulations on winning percentages. Both compliance and non-compliance within this labour market regulation regime, based on different wage structures and talent distribution, were effective strategies to improve team performance.
Description:
Before 1973, cricket and Australian Football used the Adelaide Oval for major games during their respective seasons. Football's popularity as a spectator sport prompted its organising body to seek to build an improved stadium, but cricket authorities controlled the asset and acted to maintain its specialised character as a cricket ground. A case study of how the gains from a shared capital good are negotiated when asset controllers and users have different objectives is provided. A series of counterfactual scenarios based on football remaining at the Oval is constructed from archival sources and their outcomes projected based on data in financial reports.
Description:
Australian Football clubs have traditionally been seen as contributing social benefits to the rural communities in which they are embedded. Declining numbers of participants, both players and volunteers, suggest that this role may not be as strong today. Critical explorations of the extent to which football has driven social inclusion and exclusion in such environments emphasizes a historic masculine culture of drinking and violence that segregates and marginalizes women and children. Less is known about the contemporary strategic efforts of clubs to use social capital to support their activities, and whether the resources they generate have positive impacts on social inclusion in the wider community. We use evidence from the Parliament of Victoria's Inquiry into Country Football (2004) to explore the current focus of rural Australian Football clubs regarding social inclusion, in light of changes occurring in society and rural towns in the 21st century.
Description:
Over a 50 year period, Australian Rules football's major league, the Victorian Football League, did not always use its largest and best-equipped stadium for regular season games between its most popular teams or schedule those teams to play twice in a regular season. We calculate deadweight losses from the use of capital goods (stadiums) and effects of match scheduling in this professional sports league. Such analysis has not been attempted previously because of the absence of a counterfactual. The welfare losses were significant but not sufficient to threaten the survival of a distance-protected cartel.
Description:
In the century preceding World War I, the world experienced a series of gold rushes. The wealth derived from these was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself was generally unprofitable for diggers and mine owners, the increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. In this introductory article we integrate the histories of migration, trade, colonisation, and environmental history to identify endogenous factors that increased the world's gold supply and generated sustained economic growth in the regions that were affected by gold rushes.