Jean-Marc Falter

Demand for football and intramatch winning probability: an essay on the glorious uncertainty of sports

The aims of this study are (i) to identify the main determinants of the demand for French Premiere Division football matches using all matches played during the 1997/1998 season, (ii) to estimate a team-specific probability of success, and (iii) to propose an updating process for the intramatch winning probability. The methodology is tested empirically over an out-of-sample data set using matches of the 1998/1999 season. The results show that football appears to be an inferior product affected by both socio-economic and football variables, and that the main football variables have only a tenuous explanatory power concerning the final outcome of a given match.

Impact of Overwhelming Joy on Consumer Demand: The Case of a Soccer World-Cup Victory

In this article, the authors identify the period following a Soccer World Cup victory as a period of overwhelming joy for the winning country, and they test the impact of a World Cup victory on the demand for soccer in this country. After controlling for the main determinants of attendance, the authors find that consumer demand has positively, significantly, and durably shifted in France following the 1998 World Cup. They also show that the rise in demand is stronger in the nine cities that hosted the World Cup and that the World Cup effect persists for percentage attendance after they control for season ticket holders. Finally, the authors find supportive evidence to their claim that exceptional performance improves sport popularity when analyzing soccer attendance in several control countries, attendance for a potential substitute for soccer in France, and other episodes of overwhelming joy.

The changing structure of male self‐employment in Switzerland

Purpose – The increase in self‐employment is probably one of the most important change that occurred on the Swiss labour market in the past 20 years. Using newly available census data from 1970 to 2000, seeks to investigate this evolution for the male labour force.Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on census data from 1970 to 2000. Analysis is carried out by means of probability analysis (probit and logit model) and segregation analysis.Findings – Finds that the evolution of the self‐employment rate is driven by changing factors of self‐employment as well as by a changing labour force. However, differences between self‐employed and wage‐workers have become smaller over time. This is especially relevant with respect to occupations. Regarding gender differences, the higher rate of self‐employed among men than among women is due to different factors rather than different characteristics of the labour force. Finally, investigates the structure of self‐employment in 2000. Finds that the disti...

The effect of parental background on track choices and wages

SummaryIntergenerational links are often investigated by computing educational attainment correlations between parents and children, even though parental background may influence outcomes at earlier stages of the educational path. Because of early school track selection and widespread vocational training, this effect may be quite important in the Swiss context. We first investigate the importance of parental background variables for upper secondary educational attainment over the last 6 decades. We next estimate the impact of parental background on earnings. This effect is shown to depend on the magnitude of intergenerational correlations, the returns to qualifications and the availability of further training for those having ended up in a low educational track at age 15. The impact of tracking at age 15 on wage inequality is found to be relatively small in Switzerland, comparing to results for Germany. Relatively low returns from academic education best explain this pattern.

Mismatch and Skill Utilization: Determinants and Consequences

A growing economic literature has focused on the impact of cognitive skills on labour market outcomes. While workers differ in their skills, they also face different opportunities to use them on the labour market. This may lead to important skill mismatches that have often been investigated in the literature in term of over-education. Yet, over-education measures used in the literature may capture unobserved ability rather than genuine skill mismatches. We contribute by using objective information on basic skills and their utilization at the workplace with data from the Swiss sample of the Adult literacy and lifeskills survey. We analyze the determinants of skill mismatches and their impact on wages. We find important gender differences in the probability of being over or under-skilled. Although our research focuses on a limited set of skills, our results show that skill mismatches have important effects on wages. The impact of skill mismatches on wages depends heavily on the type of education (vocational or academic).

Does Tracking Shape Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment? Evidence from Switzerland

The Swiss schooling system is characterized by early tracking of pupils into di erent types of education, which suggests that the impact of parental background may a ect transitions at a relatively young age which condition the future transitions of their children as well as their nal educational attainment. In this study, we investigate the impact of family background variables on schooling outcomes at upper secondary level by means of a two-stage estimation model. Our empirical speci cation enables us to take into account the cumulative impact of parental variables on tracking and on upper secondary school achievement. As expected, favourable family background attributes are positively correlated with school outcomes at all stages but we show that parental e ects remain important at higher grade levels, even with early selection through tracking and after controlling for cognitive ability. These ndings are especially relevant for girls and should help policymakers in designing equal opportunity tracking schemes, especially at young ages.

General Education, Vocational Education, and Wage Growth over the Lifecycle

Using data from the Swiss Labor Force Survey (1998-2006), we estimate the wage returns to job tenure, general experience, occupational experience, and industrial experience. General labor market experience appears to be the far most important determinant of lifecycle wage growth, occupational experience having a positive but quantitatively weaker impact. When occupational experience is included in the wage equation, the returns to tenure and industrial experience become negligible and nonsignificant. Regarding education types, individuals with apprenticeship training constitute a special group. Their returns to general experience are lower than both those of the less- and the more-educated, even though their educational attainment places them in between. The type of education thus matters more than education length in determining wage growth.

Have Unskilled Youths Become More Vulnerable to Unemployment in Switzerland

Unskilled workers are seen as having increasing difficulties in advanced economies, where a minimal set of skills is often required even at the low end of jobs distribution. We attempt to see if any structural change has occurred in Switzerland for young workers with only compulsory schooling and how they fare compared to adults or youths with an apprenticeship. Some change seems to be visible, but it is still unclear whether the break is due to a structural change or to greater job insecurity during downturns for unskilled workers.

Intergenerational Links and Upper Secondary Track Choice: Pattern and Consequences

Intergenerational mobility has often been investigated by computing educational attainment correlations between parents and children. However, parental choices may influence children education at earlier stages. This is the case in Switzerland where decisions about secondary school track take place between the age of 10 and 15, depending on the cantons. While this choice may be affected by innate ability, parental background may also affect the upper secondary school track. We first investigate the importance of parental background over the last 6 decades with the help of the Swiss Household Panel data. Next, we try to disentangle between ability, as measured by a cognitive test score, and parental background. Finally, the impact of school track decisions on wages is investigated. Our results show that the impact of parental background is specific to educational tracks and gender. The importance of parental background on educational inequality greatly depends on the opportunity to pursue tertiary education. Our analysis also indicates that parental background effects are mostly independent of cognitive ability, while this is not the case of gender or nationality effects. Finally, the impact of parental background on wages, through upper secondary educational attainment, is smaller in Switzerland than in other countries.

Employer Learning and Literacy Scores in Switzerland

According to theoretical models of employer learning, education is an important signal to the employer. As the employer obtains gradually better information on the productivity of workers, the returns to schooling should decrease over time while the returns to initially unobserved characteristics should increase simultaneously. In this study, we test these theoretical predictions by using data from the Adult, Literacy and Lifeskills survey (Swiss sample). We make use of literacy scores and find that the return to skills (vs. the returns to formal schooling) increase with experience while the reverse is true with respect to formal education. Thus, our results suggest that employer learning takes place in Switzerland.