Are the Lowest-Paid UFC Fighters Really Overpaid? A Comment on Gift (2019)

In a recent article in this Journal, Gift (2019) attempts to measure the marginal revenue product (MRP) of individual Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters. According to Gift’s estimates, top-tier UFC Fighters are frequently and substantially underpaid relative to their MRP while “a sizable percentage of UFC fighters generated little to no MRP,” and are consequently “overpaid by traditional measures.” In this Comment, we examine possible explanations for this finding, including various limitations of Gift’s data and methods. We also examine the underlying economics of the sport, in which quasi-fixed broadcast revenue streams, ignored in Gift's MRP estimates, play a large and increasingly dominant role. As Berri et al. (2015 ) have emphasized, comparisons of athlete compensation and standard MRP metrics (even if estimated correctly) are “meaningless” in the presence of substantial quasi-fixed revenues. Critically, Gift assumes zero MRP for all fighters in all bouts in all non-Pay-Per-View (PPV) events. As a result, Gift's method assumes fighters are “overpaid” for the vast majority (75 percent) of fighter-bouts. Even setting this aside, we argue that Gift's use of Google Trends data—at best an extremely crude proxy for a fighter's contribution to PPV revenue—suffers from measurement error, producing attenuation bias. As a consequence, Gift's data and methods are likely to substantially underestimate UFC fighters’ economic value.

Evaluating Pure Neoclassical Wage Exploitation Among Workforce Differentiated by Gender and Occupations in Singapore

The exploitation of workers can have disastrous consequences for society since their employers' wage exploitation may adversely influence living standards. Under such circumstances, the percentage of poverty and crime would rise. Due to the importance of adverse impacts of wage exploitation on workers' livelihoods, this study analyzes the concept of pure exploitation in Singapore during the period from 2011 to 2018. To accomplish this aim, the marginal revenue product (MRP) and average revenue product (ARP) of the gender and occupational groups defined by this study are compared to the groups' wages. The existence of pure exploitation among the groups, according to the obtained results, has been demonstrated. The findings also indicate that the female groups' degree of wage exploitation has been more significant than the male groups' figure.

Is offense worth more than defense and pitching? Marginal revenue product and revenue sharing in major league baseball

PurposeSports economists have consistently found that winning positively impacts team revenue fans prefer to allocate their entertainment dollars to winning teams. Previous research has also found that fans do not have a preference for how their team wins. However, this research ignores the significant variability in revenue that can exist between teams with similar attendance figures. The authors contribute to the literature by testing whether profit maximizing teams should pay different amounts for different types of production by estimating the marginal revenue product of a win due to offense, defense and pitching.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from the 2010–2017 Major League Baseball seasons and an Ordinary Least Squares-Fixed Effects approach, the authors test whether a unit of offensive, defensive and pitching production generates differing amounts of team revenue both before and after revenue sharing. The authors then test if team Wins Above Replacement is a good approximation of actual wins while accounting for the previously observed nonlinear relationship between wins and revenue.FindingsThe authors found that marginal revenue product estimates in the postrevenue sharing model for mowar, pwar and dwar are nearly identical to each other. Further, after predicting prerevenue sharing, the authors find that fans have no preference for mowar, pwar or dwar play styles.Originality/valueThe findings illustrate that team decision-makers appear to be acting irrationally by paying more for offense than they do for defense. Thus, the findings suggest that team decision-makers should value defensive wins and pitching wins at the same rate as offensive wins on the free agent market.

Food Ordering Application in Restaurant using Loyalty Program Based on Android

The purpose of this research is to make an application that give an information to the waiter or waitress about the table that want to ask for help and to chef or drink maker about the order sequentially, to easily make the restaurant management to renew the menu list without pay for more surcharge, ease the customer to save their point and for increase customer’s loyalty, help the customer to count their individual payment including the tax, and to ease the restaurant to analyze the revenue, product, and customer satisfaction. The method of this research is collecting data (interview), analysis method, system design method (use case diagram, activity diagram, class diagram, sequence diagram, application interface, and incremental SDLC), and also literature review. The result is mobile application based on android for food ordering and web application for restaurant management. The conclusion of this application is this application ”TMS Cafe” help restaurant to increase the customer loyalty using membership system, ease customer to store their point, simplify the restaurant to manage the menu and promo list with digital system, facilitate the restaurant to give information to customer about the active promo, ease customer to order food, increase the customer satisfaction with song request feature, facilitate customer to count their individual payment including taxes and also to see the transaction and point usage history.

Being Green and Social Responsibility

Through a qualitative business case approach, three major manufacturing firms in Pittsburgh, PA were reviewed for their eco-friendly sustainability strategic initiatives and products/services. Undoubtedly, use of green best practices are value adding steps for a company may be initially difficult to justify spending the time and resources developing such a process. This is especially true when other core business needs are present, such as driving revenue, product development, and meeting governmental or consumer expectations. However, green and sustainability initiatives may not be currently dictated needs, but many companies feel strongly that charting such a course would be to their stakeholders' mutual advantage. As resources are being consumed more rapidly, it is logical to enact steps to ensure the sustainability of such scare resources. The added benefit of lower input needs greatly improves the companies' stances in their market while also adding to the firms' overall profitability.

Moving the Needle in MMA: On the Marginal Revenue Product of UFC Fighters

This article analyzes fighter marginal products (MP) and marginal revenue products (MRP) for the largest component of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) revenues: content. Most bouts are fought in the presence of fixed content revenues, and most fighters go their entire careers without supplying labor services for variable revenue pay-per-view (PPV) main cards. After demonstrating that winning does not sufficiently explain variation in PPV buys, I estimate fighter MP and MRP using U.S. consumer search activity from Google Trends as a proxy for fighter popularity. Results suggest that a sizable percentage of UFC fighters generated little to no MRP, while a small number of PPV main card fighters were responsible for 75% of aggregate MRP. Other PPV main card fighters who did not drive the majority of MRP appeared to generate more than some compensation estimates. An apparent decline over time in the UFC’s inframarginal consumer base is also discussed.