With the great American pastime once again confronting the possibility of a work stoppage, the following source can offer an economic perspective on many of the sticking points between players and owners: salary caps, luxury taxes on higher-payroll teams, revenue sharing, etc.
Bruce K. Johnson is an economics professor at Centre College in Danville, KY. Johnson regularly teaches a course on the economics of professional and college sports. He has published numerous opinion pieces in major daily newspapers on topics including the 1994 major league baseball strike, major league contraction, and TV deals for Division I colleges, and has written several guest editorials in cities that have considered developing new stadiums. His newspaper columns have appeared in the Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Cincinnati Enquirer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Louisville Courier-Journal, among others. His research has been published in academic journals such as Contemporary Economic Policy and Journal of Sports Economics and has been cited in the popular press in publications including Businessweek. His chapter on baseball's antitrust exemption and the role it plays in labor unrest appears in the recent book from Syracuse University Press, Diamond Mines: Baseball and Labor.
According to Johnson, repealing Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption could go a long way in shrinking the game's revenue gap and helping to prevent future strikes.
"Eliminate the antitrust exemption and make the National and American Leagues compete with each other for the best locations," he says. "Teams would move to the most lucrative locations and the leagues would expand to put teams in any market that could support one, lest the other league get there first. Instead of contraction, or languishing in Montreal or Tampa Bay, teams would move to Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Washington."
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