IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/rwirep/681.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What makes you "super-rich"? New evidence from an analysis of football players' earnings

Author

Listed:
  • Carrieri, Vincenzo
  • Principe, Francesco
  • Raitano, Michele

Abstract

This article investigates the influence of performance, popularity and power on "superearnings" using a unique panel dataset of Italian football players built on various sources of data. Using OLS, Panel and Unconditional Quantile regression techniques, we find that detailed measures of these factors are all significantly associated with higher wages. Popularity dominates all the other factors at the right tail of earnings distribution and the agent's power contributes mostly to allocate players in richer teams. These new findings challenge the interpretations of super-earnings based only on very talented workers who "win and take all".

Suggested Citation

  • Carrieri, Vincenzo & Principe, Francesco & Raitano, Michele, 2017. "What makes you "super-rich"? New evidence from an analysis of football players' earnings," Ruhr Economic Papers 681, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:rwirep:681
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/155772/1/882051407.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "The Top 1% in International and Historical Perspective," Post-Print halshs-00847231, HAL.
    2. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    3. Blair,Roger D., 2012. "Sports Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521876612, January.
    4. Tito Boeri & Battista Severgnini, 2014. "The decline of professional football in Italy," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 19, pages 322-335, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Egon Franck & Stephan Nüesch, 2012. "Talent And/Or Popularity: What Does It Take To Be A Superstar?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(1), pages 202-216, January.
    6. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Introduction to "Schooling, Experience, and Earnings"," NBER Chapters, in: Schooling, Experience, and Earnings, pages 1-4, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Maurizio Franzini & Elena Granaglia & Michele Raitano, 2016. "Extreme Inequalities in Contemporary Capitalism," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-28811-6, January.
    8. Leif Brandes & Egon Franck & Stephan Nuesch, 2006. "Local Heroes and Superstars - An Empirical Analysis of Star Attraction in German Soccer," Working Papers 0046, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU), revised 2007.
    9. Andrew M. Jones & James Lomas & Nigel Rice, 2015. "Healthcare Cost Regressions: Going Beyond the Mean to Estimate the Full Distribution," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(9), pages 1192-1212, September.
    10. Christian Deutscher & Arne Büschemann, 2016. "Does Performance Consistency Pay Off Financially for Players? Evidence From the Bundesliga," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 17(1), pages 27-43, January.
    11. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling, Experience, and Earnings," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number minc74-1.
    12. Lucian Arye Bebchuk & Jesse M. Fried, 2003. "Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 71-92, Summer.
    13. Josh Bivens & Lawrence Mishel, 2013. "The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals as Evidence of Rents in Top 1 Percent Incomes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 57-78, Summer.
    14. Julianne Treme & Samuel K. Allen, 2009. "Widely Received: Payoffs to Player Attributes in the NFL," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 1631-1643.
    15. Erik E. Lehmann & Günther G. Schulze, 2007. "What does it take to be a star? The role of performance and the media for German soccer players," Discussion Paper Series 1, Department of International Economic Policy, University of Freiburg, revised Mar 2008.
    16. Koenker, Roger W & Bassett, Gilbert, Jr, 1978. "Regression Quantiles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 33-50, January.
    17. Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 3-20, Summer.
    18. Christian Deutscher & Oliver Gürtler & Joachim Prinz & Daniel Weimar, 2017. "The Payoff To Consistency In Performance," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 1091-1103, April.
    19. Bernd Frick, 2007. "The Football Players' Labor Market: Empirical Evidence From The Major European Leagues," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 54(3), pages 422-446, July.
    20. Bebchuk, Lucian A. & Fried, Jesse M., 2003. "Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt81q3136r, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    21. Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "The Economics of Superstars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 845-858, December.
    22. Lawrence M. Kahn, 2000. "The Sports Business as a Labor Market Laboratory," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 75-94, Summer.
    23. Charles J. Mullin & Lucia F. Dunn, 2002. "Using Baseball Card Prices to Measure Star Quality and Monopsony," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(4), pages 620-632, October.
    24. Babatunde Buraimo & Bernd Frick & Michael Hickfang & Rob Simmons, 2015. "The Economics of Long-term Contracts in the Footballers' Labour Market," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 62(1), pages 8-24, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vincenzo Carrieri & Andrew M. Jones & Francesco Principe, 2020. "Productivity Shocks and Labour Market Outcomes for Top Earners: Evidence from Italian Serie A," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(3), pages 549-576, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vincenzo Carrieri & Andrew M. Jones & Francesco Principe, 2020. "Productivity Shocks and Labour Market Outcomes for Top Earners: Evidence from Italian Serie A," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(3), pages 549-576, June.
    2. Carrieri, V.; & Jones, A.M.; & Principe, F.;, 2018. "Health shocks and labour market outcomes: evidence from professional football," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 18/01, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    3. Stefan Bach, 2014. ""Reichensteuer"-Diskussion: Hintergrund und Perspektiven," DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus 16, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Brandes, Leif & Franck, Egon, 2012. "Social preferences or personal career concerns? Field evidence on positive and negative reciprocity in the workplace," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 925-939.
    5. Müller, Oliver & Simons, Alexander & Weinmann, Markus, 2017. "Beyond crowd judgments: Data-driven estimation of market value in association football," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 263(2), pages 611-624.
    6. Bartling, Björn & Cappelen, Alexander W & Ekström, Mathias & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2018. "Fairness in Winner-Take-All Markets," Working Paper Series 1214, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    7. Herm, Steffen & Callsen-Bracker, Hans-Markus & Kreis, Henning, 2014. "When the crowd evaluates soccer players’ market values: Accuracy and evaluation attributes of an online community," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 484-492.
    8. François Rycx & Yves Saks & Ilan Tojerow, 2015. "Does Education Raise Productivity and Wages Equally? The Moderating Roles of Age, Gender and Industry," Working Paper Research 281, National Bank of Belgium.
    9. Julianne Treme & Samuel K. Allen, 2009. "Widely Received: Payoffs to Player Attributes in the NFL," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 1631-1643.
    10. Inna Zaytseva & Daniil Shaposhnikov, 2020. "Moneyball In Offensive Vs Defensive Actions In Soccer," HSE Working papers WP BRP 223/EC/2020, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    11. Oliver Denk, 2015. "Financial sector pay and labour income inequality: Evidence from Europe," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1225, OECD Publishing.
    12. Anil Özdemir & Helmut Dietl & Giambattista Rossi & Robert Simmons, 2020. "Are Workers Rewarded for Inconsistent Performance?," Working Papers 386, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    13. Grund, Christian & Walter, Tanja, 2013. "Management Compensation and the Economic Crisis: Longitudinal Evidence from the German Chemical Sector," IZA Discussion Papers 7435, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Christian Deutscher & Oliver Gürtler & Joachim Prinz & Daniel Weimar, 2017. "The Payoff To Consistency In Performance," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 1091-1103, April.
    15. Erling Barth & Alex Bryson & James C. Davis & Richard Freeman, 2016. "It's Where You Work: Increases in the Dispersion of Earnings across Establishments and Individuals in the United States," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(S2), pages 67-97.
    16. Velema, Thijs A., 2019. "Upward and downward job mobility and player market values in contemporary European professional football," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 209-221.
    17. Rachel Scarfe & Carl Singleton & Paul Telemo, 2020. "Extreme wages, performance and superstars in a market for footballers," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-04, Department of Economics, Reading University.
    18. Richau, Lukas & Follert, Florian & Frenger, Monika & Emrich, Eike, 2021. "The Rainmaker?! The impact of investors on transfer fees in the English Premier League," Working Paper 187/2021, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg.
    19. Theodore Koutmeridis, 2013. "The Market for "Rough Diamonds": Information, Finance and Wage Inequality," CDMA Working Paper Series 201307, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis, revised 14 Oct 2013.
    20. Jean-Marc Fournier & Isabell Koske, 2012. "The determinants of earnings inequality: evidence from quantile regressions," OECD Journal: Economic Studies, OECD Publishing, vol. 2012(1), pages 7-36.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    superstars; top incomes; football players' earnings; panel data; unconditional quantile regressions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:rwirep:681. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/rwiesde.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.