THE SUPERSTAR CODE - DECIPHERING KEY CHARACTERISTICS AND THEIR VALUE

Franziska Prockl ()
Additional contact information
Franziska Prockl: University of Paderborn

No 38, Working Papers Dissertations from Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics

Abstract: The purpose of the presented research is to advance the superstar literature on the aspect of superstar’s characteristics and value. Typically, superstar research is faced with one problem: They apply the same criteria to determine who their superstars are as to describe them later because they lack “an objective measure of star quality” (Krueger, 2005, p.18). To avoid this complication, the author chose to study Major League Soccer’s (MLS) designated players as this setting present a unique, as discrete, assignment of star status. MLS has formally introduced stars in 2007 under the designated player (DP) rule which delivers over 100 star-observations in the last ten years to investigate MLS strategy of star employment. The insights from this data set demonstrate which characteristics are relevant, whether MLS stars can be categorized as Rosen or Adler stars, and what the MLS pays for and in this sense values most. A cluster analysis discovers a sub group of ten stars that stand out from the others, in this sense superstars. A two-stage regression model confirms the value stemming from popularity, leadership qualities, previous playing level, age and national team experience but refutes other typical performance indicators like games played and goals scored or position. Overall, evidence for Rosen and Adler’s theory is found, and an over the time change from hiring old and popular stars to younger but still leadership-prone stars.

Keywords: Superstar; Major League Soccer; designated players; superstar salary; popularity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J44 L83 Z22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/wp-wiwi/RePEc/pdf/dispap/DP38.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pdn:dispap:38

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers Dissertations from Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WP-WiWi-Info ().