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In baseball, a run scored on offense carries the same on-field (win) value as does a run prevented on defense. Both outcomes bear the same score margin implication. This presumption of unit equality is implicit in the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) measure, which treats units of offensive WAR (oWAR) and units of defensive WAR (dWAR) as perfectly substitutable toward win production. The purpose of this paper is to ask whether the salaries of Major League Baseball (MLB) players reveal such an equal valuation among MLB teams.

The authors examine the relationship between offensive output, defensive output and subsequent salary from free agency in MLB using a set of log-linear OLS, fixed effects regression specifications.

In general, estimated annual salary from free agency increases significantly and substantially with unit increases in a player's (prior season) wins above replacement WAR. Across specifications, the authors estimate a 42.5–43.4% increase in salary for year t for each additional unit of WAR in year t−1. The authors disaggregate WAR into offensive and defensive components (oWAR and dWAR) and estimate a 52.4–53.3 (4.8–7.2)% increase in salary for each additional unit of oWAR (dWAR).

The efficiency of the baseball labor market has been studied previously with mixed results. The novelty of the present study is its treatment of inputs not as positions or individual players but as the underlying offensive and defensive win production of players. The authors estimate free agency salary returns to (contract season) oWAR and dWAR in MLB to establish whether (to what extent) a salary premium for offensive output exists within MLB.

Sports economists have consistently found that winning positively impacts team revenue fans prefer to allocate their entertainment dollars to winning teams. Previous research has also found that fans do not have a preference for how their team wins. However, this research ignores the significant variability in revenue that can exist between teams with similar attendance figures. The authors contribute to the literature by testing whether profit maximizing teams should pay different amounts for different types of production by estimating the marginal revenue product of a win due to offense, defense and pitching.

Using data from the 2010–2017 Major League Baseball seasons and an Ordinary Least Squares-Fixed Effects approach, the authors test whether a unit of offensive, defensive and pitching production generates differing amounts of team revenue both before and after revenue sharing. The authors then test if team Wins Above Replacement is a good approximation of actual wins while accounting for the previously observed nonlinear relationship between wins and revenue.

The authors found that marginal revenue product estimates in the postrevenue sharing model for mowar, pwar and dwar are nearly identical to each other. Further, after predicting prerevenue sharing, the authors find that fans have no preference for mowar, pwar or dwar play styles.

The findings illustrate that team decision-makers appear to be acting irrationally by paying more for offense than they do for defense. Thus, the findings suggest that team decision-makers should value defensive wins and pitching wins at the same rate as offensive wins on the free agent market.

Since recent research has found that offensively oriented players receive a salary premium, the current study recognizes this observed premium might exist because offense is worth more in terms of revenue generation. Given the popular sports saying, “Offense sells tickets, defense wins championships,” the authors quantify whether offense really does sell more “tickets” than defense in the NBA.

Using NBA team revenue data as well as team offensive and defensive win shares, the authors estimate several econometric specifications to test if teams generate more revenue for offensive wins compared to defensive wins. The authors also employ a multi-year free agency study to identify if NBA players receive more compensation for offensive production than they do for defensive production.

The authors find no statistical difference in revenue generation from offense compared to defense. The authors confirm these findings both before and after revenue sharing. These results are also robust to alternative specifications. Therefore, the authors conclude that fans do not prefer offense to defense in terms of their spending. Contrary to previous research, the authors find no evidence of an offensive premium paid to NBA players.

Based on their findings, offensively oriented players should not receive a salary premium. The clear implication for team decision makers is that offensive production should be compensated at a similar rate as defensive production. Since the authors do not find evidence of an offensive premium for offensive production, their research suggests a likely labor market equilibrium in the NBA for both profit-maximizing and win-maximizing teams.

The purpose of this paper is to review the economics literature of publicly subsidized sports stadiums and mega-events. Let it be noted, however, that the author was unable to find any substantial economics literature in terms of how publicly funded stadiums and events affect income and wealth inequality.

This paper was designed for coherent legibility with the intention of reviewing economic literature on the effects of publicly funded sports stadiums and events. However, upon investigation it was found that there is a surprising dearth of relevant literature pertaining to the implications of publicly funded stadiums and sports events and their effects on income and wealth inequality.

Although the author discovered research performed by non-economists, they were unable to find research wherein economists explicitly investigate the impact of stadium subsidies on income and wealth inequality.

The social implications of publicly funded sports-related constructions and events, though surprisingly under-reported by economists, can be startlingly extensive in terms of sheer numbers. In all, 1.5 million individuals were purportedly displaced in order to make room for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In total, 250,000 people were likewise forced to move in order to accommodate the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. These numbers warrant further investigation by economists.

The author was unable to find any literature pertaining to the effects on income or wealth inequality of publicly funded sports stadiums and mega-events. This review would therefore appear to be unique.

A standard result of firm theory is that a monopoly maximizes profit somewhere along the elastic portion of its demand curve. However, empirical studies of sports ticket pricing routinely find that (home) teams price along the inelastic portion of demand. Despite compelling theoretical explanations of this finding, at least one important factor remains unconsidered. A profit-maximizing team considers not only direct marginal revenue and direct marginal cost when setting a ticket price but also deferred, strategic benefit (revenue) from present game success. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Prior literature finds that a given win is valued in that it generates additional future revenue and likelihood of home victory rises, ceteris paribus, in crowd density. The authors construct a firm profit maximization problem in which a sports team considers both present and future revenue when pricing home games in the present period.

If the deferred benefit is sufficiently large, a forward-looking, profit-maximizing team prices along the inelastic portion of its static demand curve. Importantly, this same price falls along the elastic portion of the firm’s (empirically unobserved) dynamic demand curve.

This is the first model of sports ticket pricing to recognize the intertemporal nature of demand for a sports match.

In this chapter, the author shares almost 2 decades of experience as Director of Colonial Day at the Oklahoma State Capitol in guiding students' storytelling and historical interpretation. Storytelling provides specific benefits in the classroom, including increased student interest, creativity, citizenship, and awareness of heritage and history. The author explains the pedagogical and curricular value of storytelling and historical interpretation activities; she provides a strong rationale for involving students in both processes for engagement and also as a multimodal learning method. Potter shows how to develop an effective instructional sequence that addresses not only assessment but also student motivation and creativity. Modeling storytelling and historical interpretation for students prepares them to take the next steps in research and development for their own presentations that incorporate language arts, social studies, civics, and critical thinking skills. The author provides detailed suggestions on directing student performances at the community and state levels, which in turn foster a sense of personal achievement and external recognition for their work. This chapter includes resources and strategies to support students in choosing historical figures and stories for their projects, in conducting research, in story mapping, and in identifying performance criteria. At the performance level, the author offers tips on coaching students effectively and using media. She concludes with recommendations on how to showcase student work at the school and state levels, to build parent involvement, and to manage funding and publicity.

When historical visibility has faded, when the present tense of testimony loses its power to arrest, then the displacements of memory and the indirections of art offer us the image of our psychic survival. To live in the unhomely world, to find its ambivalencies and ambiguities enacted in the house of fiction, or its sundering and splitting performed in the work of art, is also to affirm a profound desire for social solidarity: ‘I am looking for the join…I want to join…I want to join’ (Bhabha, 1994, p. 18).This chapter follows points and practices of cultural and legal suture. My aim is to trace a thematic excursion into the unremarked or culturally unseen spaces that repeatedly inter dead bodies. This task is rewarded by aesthetic practice excavating a site of repression, a site that confesses our flight from, but necessary management of, dead bodies within cultural spaces. To achieve this, my attention turns to a State-owned graveyard on Hart Island, located in Long Island Sound, New York. Hart Island is a graveyard for New York’s poor, unclaimed or unknown dead – what is commonly known as a “potter’s field.”¹ It is a place where law and art intersect in remarkable absence of any significant cultural claim on the island, and it is a landscape where the failings of forensic conclusion are now mingling with an aesthetic revelation.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing marketing literature that investigates markets as “configurations”, i.e. networks of market actors engaged in market-shaping practices and performances. As this pioneering work has been largely focused on established mainstream markets and industries driven by large multi-national companies, the present article extends practice-based market theorizing to countercultural market emergence and also to unconventional market practices shaping it.

Insights are drawn from a four-year multi-sited ethnographic study of a rapidly expanding electronic music scene that serves as an illustrative example of emergent countercultural market.

In contrast to mainstream consumer or industrial markets, the authors identify a distinctive dynamic underlying market emergence. Countercultural markets as well as their appeal and longevity largely depend on an inherent authenticity paradox that focal market actors need to sustain and negotiate through ongoing market-shaping and market-restricting practices.

From a practitioner perspective, the authors discuss the implications for market actors wishing to build on countercultural authenticity. They highlight the fragility of countercultural markets and point out practices sustaining them, and also possibilities and challenges in tapping into them.

The study contributes by theorizing the tensions that energize and drive countercultural market emergence. In particular, the authors address the important role of market-restricting practices in facilitating countercultural appeal that has not received explicit attention in prior marketing literature.

Viral videos of police violence create demands for new police narratives about using force. Public reactions to videos lead spokespeople to provide justifications that support narrative structures of the necessity and inevitability of police violence. Ultimately, video is presented as lacking context and credibility when it is viewed unaccompanied by police explanations.