Amy Nguyen, an undergraduate Honors student, worked with Professor Michael Leeds on a paper for her Honors project. Last month, this research article that ultimately came out of this project was published in the Journal of Sports Economics, under the title “Productivity, Rents, and the Salaries of Group of Five Football Coaches”. Here is the abstract of the paper:
“Standard labor market theory says that workers are paid their marginal revenue product (MRP). However, firm revenue is sometimes independent of the productivity of individual workers. This often occurs in professional sports, as the bulk of a team’s revenue comes from league-wide TV contracts negotiated years in advance. This is also true for head coaches at “Group of Five” schools, which form the second tier of college football programs. We show that a coach’s performance affects both his MRP and his bargaining power over the division of exogenous rents that accrue to his program.”