Are You Ready for Some Football? Estimating the Effect of American Football Season on Labor Supply in the United States

Authors

• Luke Petach, Belmont UniversityFollow
• Dustin Rumbaugh, Belmont UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Abstract

American football season reduces the Monday labor hours of employed men by two-thirds of an hour. A similar effect is found for Friday labor hours. We term these effects the “hangover effect” and “happy hour effect.” Consistent with a wide class of labor market models, the labor supply effect varies over the business cycle, increasing in expansions. The hangover effect implies an intertemporal elasticity of labor supply on the order of 0.014. Evaluated at the median hourly wage, our estimates imply an annual economic cost of foregone earnings associated with football season in the neighborhood of $5.06 billion.

Comments

Accepted version. Published version available in Journal of Sports Economics: https://doi.org/10.1177/15270025211024649.

Recommended Citation

Petach, L. and Rumbaugh, D. 2021. "Are You Ready for Some Football? Estimating the Effect of American Football Season on Labor Supply in the United States." Journal of Sports Economics, 22(8): 893-920.