Jaume García

The Determinants of Football Match Attendance Revisited: Empirical Evidence From the Spanish Football League

An attendance equation is estimated using data on individual games played in the Spanish First Division Football League. The specification includes as explanatory factors: economic variables, quality, uncertainty and opportunity costs. The authors concentrate the analysis on some specification issues such as controlling the effect of unobservables given the panel data structure of the data set, the type of functional form, and the potential endogeneity of prices. The authors obtain the expected effects on attendance for all the variables. The estimated price elasticities are, in general, smaller than one in absolute value but are sensitive to the specification issues, in particular, the endogeneity of prices.

Estimation of a Structural Model of the Determinants of the Time Spent on Physical Activity and Sport Evidence for Spain

The aim of this article is to extend the standard neoclassical consumer theory to explain the allocation of individual time to physical activity and sports. The authors assume a Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) utility function and they estimate the model using the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) method and the Heckman two-step procedure. They run separate estimates for men and women using the Spanish Time-Use Survey conducted in 2002-2003. The results show that there are gender differences in the determinants of the allocation of time to physical activity. Moreover, participation in physical activity and sports and the time devoted to these activities seem to be based on different decisions.

From sports clubs to stock companies: The financial structure of football in Spain, 1992–2001

In this paper we study the financial structure of professional football in Spain during the last decade. In 1992, all the football clubs in Spain with the exception of Athletic Bilbao, Barcelona, Osasuna and Real Madrid, became stock companies, obtaining extra money from Spanish football pools to cancel their debts. Five years later, the clubs signed new individual contracts with television operators and received new revenues from these agreements. For the second time, the old solution of obtaining a large cash injection did not solve the clubs’ financial problems. Instead, new circumstances appeared. Transfer fees and players’ wages were increasing substantially, clubs were spending money from future revenues and balance sheets were based on intangible fixed assets. This situation has meant that for some clubs it will be difficult to survive in professional football in Spain.

The Willingness to Pay to Keep a Football Club in a City: How Important are the Methodological Issues?

The contingent valuation method (CVM) is used to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) to keep a football club in a city in Spain (R. C. Deportivo de A Coruña). The authors pay attention to the distinction between genuine and protest zeros in the answer to an open-ended question. The authors propose the use of a Double Hurdle model where the information in the questionnaire for identifying the zeros is not used. The estimated nonuse value represents more than 81% of the total value. Nevertheless, when aggregating the sample estimates to population figures, the WTP is far below the amount of money of some potential decisions of the public authorities.

Which Are the Real Determinants of Tenure? A Comparative Analysis of Different Models of the Tenure Choice of a House:

Tenure choice is closely bound to other vital individual decisions of great importance not only for the individual but also for the country in which he or she resides. The present paper includes a comparison of the different approaches that have been used in the economic literature in the analysis of the individual’s housing tenure choice. According to their dependent variable, the different models can be divided into: those whose dependent variable is tenure (classical models, ‘recent movers’ models and sequential models) and those in which the dependent variable is transition from renting to the position of ownership (duration models and ‘choice-based’ models). Results show the best performance for the models in which the variable to be explained is the transition from renting to ownership and highlight real determinants of tenure (life-cycle variables) and transition (life-cycle variables, prices and transaction costs). Finally, marital status stands out as the variable with the highest incidence.

Local Public Expenditures and Housing Prices

This paper estimates a hedonic price model which makes it possible to determine how the price of a unit varies with the set of attributes it possesses, in the Spanish housing market. Concretely, and by means of capitalisation, hedonic price models can be used as an instrument to capture how local public expenditures influence housing prices and, by extension, how homeowners can indirectly receive benefit from local public investment. Using individual data for dwellings from the city of Barcelona (Spain) for the period 1998—2001, it is found that local policies aimed at enhancing the quality of life or the location-specific characteristic of the city of Barcelona have a positive impact on housing values.

The Demand for Football Pools in Spain: The Role of Price, Prizes, and the Composition of the Coupon

Using data for all the fixtures for the seasons from 1972-73 to 2002-03, we estimate a dynamic model of demand for football pools in Spain paying attention to the effect of the main economic explanatory variables: the face value of a coupon, the effective price of a bet, and the jackpot. Additionally, we evaluate the importance of the composition of the list of games in the coupon, i.e., whether First Division matches are included. Results show that both the face value and the jackpot, but not the effective price, have significant effects on sales, which could have important implications in terms of how the structure of the game should be changed in order to have an effect on sales.

Demand for Private Health Insurance: Is there a Quality Gap?

Quality of care is qualified as a main determinant of the demand for voluntary private health insurance (PHI) in National Health Systems (NHS). This paper provides new evidence on the influence of the quality gap between public and private health insurance and other demand determinants in the demand for PHI in Catalonia. The demand for PHI is modelled as a demand for health care quality. Unlike previous studies, the database employed allows for the development of a link between the theoretical and the empirical model dealing with unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity issues. Results suggest that a rise in PHI quality enhances an equivalent influence in the demand for PHI as an equal reduction of NHS quality. Income and price elasticity estimates are consistent with the observed feature that PHI appears to be a luxury good and individuals tend to be relatively insensible to tax reliefs and monetary co-payments in insurance contracts.

Measuring socioeconomic health inequalities: fiction or reality?

This paper empirically examines the inequalities related to social class and income using individual self‐reported health status data. Health inequalities are estimated by different indexes using individual standardised and unstandardised health status data. The population was divided into income and social class, respectively. From this two main results are obtatined: inequalities are sensitive to the health status variable and the social position variable employed. It was found that significant health related social class inequalities were insignificant when income was employed as a reference variable.

A study of traveller decision-making determinants: prioritizing destination or travel mode?

This paper focuses on how travellers prioritize their choices in making a final decision on their holiday destination and travel conditions, especially on how they consider the ‘all-inclusive’ travel mode. The authors use 1,065 observations from a visitor exit survey (in two waves: 2006 and 2012) to examine the determinants of prioritizing destination choice or travel mode in the holiday decision-making process. Estimating a multinomial model, they find that the decision structure of those individuals who prioritize destination is different from that of those who prioritize the travel mode. The paper also contributes to research on the intention to return to a destination related to the intention to repeat the same holiday formula. The authors distinguish between those tourists who prioritize destination choice and those who prioritize the travel mode. Through an estimated sequential model, they present the results of the revisiting patterns for these two groups.