We study the effects of completing the legal framework of matchmakers with a rule designating which party must pay the commission. The paper examines the two rules currently open to debate at the international level in sport: the "player-pays" principle and the "club-pays" principle. We find that the most appropriate measure entails designating the party with the lesser bargaining power to pay the intermediary's fee. However, our main result indicates that the appropriateness of imposing an additional rule in the legal framework is a preliminary issue. Indeed, even if the best rule is chosen, welfare may be decreased by this legal initiative.
BiglaiserG. (1993). Middlemen as experts. RAND Journal of Economics, 24, 212–223.
2.
BrocardJ. F. (2012). A market test for sports agents: Market power in the French professional basketball leagues.Working Paper, CDES.
3.
JohriΑ., & LeachJ. (2002). Middlemen and the allocation of heterogeneous goods. International Economic Review, 43, 347–362.
4.
GehrigT. (1993). Intermediation in search markets. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 2, 97–120.
5.
LiY. (1998). Middlemen and private information. Journal of Monetary Economics, 42,131–159.
6.
MageeJ. (2002). Shifting balances of power in the new football economy. In SugdenA. & TomlinsonJ., (Eds.), Power games: Theory and method for the critical sociology of sport (pp 216–239). Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge.
7.
MasonD. S. (2006). Player agents. In AndreffW. & SzymanskiS. (Eds.), Handbook on the economics of sport (pp 677–684). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
8.
PoliR., & RossiG. (2012). Football agents in the biggest five European football markets. An empirical research report.Neuchâtel, Switzerland: CIES Football Observatory.
9.
RosnerS. R. (2004). Conflicts of interest and the shifting paradigm of athlete representation. UCLA Entertainment and Law Review, 11, 196–244.
10.
RubinsteinΑ., & WolinskyA. (1987). Middlemen. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 102, 581–594.
11.
ShevchenkoA. (2004). Middlemen. International Economic Review, 45, 1–24.
12.
ShropshireK. L., & DavisT. (2008). The business of sports agents.Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
13.
YavasA. (1992). Marketmakers versus matchmakers. Journal of Financial Intermediation, 2, 33–58.
14.
YavasA. (1994). Middlemen in bilateral search. Journal of Labor Economics, 12, 406–429.
15.
YavasA. (2001). The immediacy service of the specialist as a coordination mechanism. International Review of Economics and Finance, 10, 205–221.
