{"title":"Extreme Wages, Performance, and Superstars in a Market for Footballers","authors":"Rachel Scarfe, Carl Singleton, Paul Telemo","doi":"10.1111/irel.12270","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We study the determinants of superstar wage effects, asking whether productivity or popularity-based explanations are more appropriate. We use longitudinal wage and performance data for workers (players) and firms (teams) from a particular market for sports talent: Major League Soccer (MLS) in the United States. We find evidence that the top earners, whose annual salaries are mostly not accounted for by their past MLS performances, when compared to other footballers, are paid more because they attract significantly higher stadium attendances and thus revenues. There is no evidence that higher residual salary spending by the teams affects their relative performance in football terms, or that the amounts the teams spend on actual talent affect attendances. Taken together, these results suggest that a popularity-based explanation of superstar wage effects is appropriate among the top earners in this labor market.</p>","PeriodicalId":47700,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/irel.12270","citationCount":"7","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Industrial Relations","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irel.12270","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS & LABOR","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 7
Abstract
We study the determinants of superstar wage effects, asking whether productivity or popularity-based explanations are more appropriate. We use longitudinal wage and performance data for workers (players) and firms (teams) from a particular market for sports talent: Major League Soccer (MLS) in the United States. We find evidence that the top earners, whose annual salaries are mostly not accounted for by their past MLS performances, when compared to other footballers, are paid more because they attract significantly higher stadium attendances and thus revenues. There is no evidence that higher residual salary spending by the teams affects their relative performance in football terms, or that the amounts the teams spend on actual talent affect attendances. Taken together, these results suggest that a popularity-based explanation of superstar wage effects is appropriate among the top earners in this labor market.
期刊介绍：
Corporate restructuring and downsizing, the changing employment relationship in union and nonunion settings, high performance work systems, the demographics of the workplace, and the impact of globalization on national labor markets - these are just some of the major issues covered in Industrial Relations. The journal offers an invaluable international perspective on economic, sociological, psychological, political, historical, and legal developments in labor and employment. It is the only journal in its field with this multidisciplinary focus on the implications of change for business, government and workers.
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