Comment on Driskill and Vrooman: “It’s Not over ‘Til the Fat Lady Sings: Game-Theoretic Analysis of Sports Leagues”

Abstract

Driskill and Vrooman have recently provided an interesting argument for a Cournot-based approach to modeling duopsony sports leagues with perfectly inelastic talent supply (the usual assumption for major North American sports league), quite different from the suggestion made by this author (and others) that specifications where talent expenditures are strategic variables (rather than Cournot talent levels) are most appropriate for the context. This comment offers some clarifications and comparisons of the merits of the alternative approaches; they continue to point toward the talent expenditure approach as the most fruitful for the leagues under investigation and probably more generally.