Publications

The Relocation Effect of a Major League Franchise on Residential Property Values

Published in Working Paper, 2025

We exploit the relocation of the NFL’s Rams franchise as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of residential proximity to sports amenities using difference-in-differences hedonics. For a sample of single-family homes transacted in St. Louis between 2012 and 2019, we reveal that the relocation has provoked a significant relative price depreciation of 7.52% in housing values within a three-mile impact area. Subsequent distance ring analyses show that the effect is dispersed heterogeneously across space and declines in a non-linear distance-decaying pattern from the former host stadium. We perform a synthetic control analysis and identify a stagnation in the number of food and accommodation establishments, along with a moderate decline in retail trade establishments, as an important transmission mechanism underlying the observed loss in local amenity value. Approximating the aggregate relative housing value depreciation suggests the Rams generated substantial intangible amenity value, though insufficient to provide a compelling economic rationale for the generous public subsidization seen in recent decades.

Recommended citation: Froch, Jonas; (2025); "The Relocation Effect of a Major League Franchise on Residential Property Values"; Working Paper
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Contingent Employment and Effort: Lessons from Soccer

Published in , 2025

The contingency of an employment arrangement may incentivize agents to elicit structural behavioral responses driven by career concerns. We develop a dynamic multitasking model predicting that contingent employment strengthens incentives to exert effort, especially in highly visible tasks. Using loan transfers in professional soccer as a proxy, we test this effort-visibility hypothesis via an entropy balancing approach. We find support for our hypothesis in that loan players increase their effort in conspicuous actions, such as shots on target and duels, while reducing effort in more subtle actions, such as passes and ball retention. While we find no significant impact on team performance, the observed behavioral pattern may carry broader implications in the field.