Human Capital, Sports Performance and Salary Determination of Professional Athletes

16 Pages Posted: 30 Mar 2006

See all articles by Roberto Antonietti

Roberto Antonietti

University of Padova - "Marco Fanno" Department of Economics and Management

Date Written: March 15, 2006

Abstract

Thanks to the high availability of data, professional sport represents a unique laboratory in order to test labour market theories and predictions. In particular, one of the most important propositions concerns the role that human capital plays in shaping the life-cycle earnings patterns of workers. To the extent that sport can be considered as a type of human capital investment, human capital theory can help to understand, and empirically assess, how the professional sports labour market rewards performance attributes of players. On this purpose, this piece of work reviews the most important economic contributions focused on the wage determination of professional athletes with the aim of outlining both the emerging common features and the main issues. In so doing, a distinction between professional team-sports and professional single-player sports is done, where the former is represented by the most popular sports in North America and Europe, such as baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer, whereas the latter is primarily represented by professional golf in the US.

Keywords: human capital, sports performance, monopsonistic exploitation, salary, two-step equation approach

JEL Classification: J24, J31, J42, J44

Suggested Citation

Antonietti, Roberto, Human Capital, Sports Performance and Salary Determination of Professional Athletes (March 15, 2006). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=888535 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.888535

Roberto Antonietti (Contact Author)

University of Padova - "Marco Fanno" Department of Economics and Management ( email )

via Del Santo 33
Padova, PD 35123
Italy
+390498271508 (Phone)
+390498274211 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.economia.unipd.it/category/ruoli/personale-docente?key=4FD07667CE6DC0DA28DDD61A73393A5F

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