A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ECONOMICS OF SPORT

The field of sports economics is one that can be traced back to very definite origins. Just as the discipline of economics can be attributed to Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth and Poverty of Nations, the first application of economic methods to sport dates back almost seven decades, to 1956. The same year that the New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers, which remains the only perfect game in World Series history, University of Chicago economist Simon Rottenberg published “The baseball players’ labor market” in