Book review: soccernomics
I just finished reading the fascinating book "SOCCERNOMICS: why England loses, why Spain, Germany and Brazil win, and why the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey - and even Iraq - are destined to become the kings of the World's most popular sport" . It is the first time I ever read anything interesting about football! The authors, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, are two economists interested in sports and they enjoy to apply - in sometimes an unconventional and surprising way - their economist's tools and reasoning to sports. Using plenty of data, they try to answer the following questions: Why do clubs have so much debt? Is a club a business? How efficient is the transfer market? Should we regulate more the sports markets? aka limit debt, share the revenues more equally among clubs Is it worth hosting a major sports event like the World Cup or the Olympics? How to shoot a penalty? What does the rise and decrease of some clubs tell us? Rather t