The Economics of Football

Steven Dobson is Senior Lecturer in Economics at Queen's University, Belfast. He has held positions at the Universities of Hull, Leeds and Reading in the UK and at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. He is the joint author of Introduction to Economics (Oxford University Press, 1999) and a co-author of Microeconomics (McGraw-Hill, 1995). Most of his research focuses on the economics of professional football and he has published numerous articles in journals including Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Economic History Review, The Statistician, Managerial and Decision Economics, Regional Studies, Journal of Economic Studies and Journal of Sports Economics. John Goddard is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at University of Wales, Swansea. He has also held positions at University of Leeds, Abertay, University of Dundee and University of Wales Bangor. Research interests are the economics of sport and industrial organisation. He has published numerous articles in academic journals including International Journal of Industrial Organization, Economics Letters, Economic History Review, Managerial and Decision Economics, The Statistician, Bulletin of Economic Research and Applied Economics.

List of figures; List of tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Professional football: historical development and economic structure; 3. Competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome; 4. The labour and transfer markets; 5. The contribution of the football manager; 6. Managerial change and team performance; 7. The demand for football attendance; 8. Information transmission and efficiency: share prices and fixed-odds betting; 9. Professional football: current issues and future prospects; List of references; Index.