Under Regime #2 there will likely be more investment because the benefits from investing are internalized. For example, if I own a piece of farm land, I will be inclined to build irrigation because it will allow me to grow more crops. However, under Regime #1, I would not build irrigation because I don't have exclusion rights, so other people could come and use my irrigated land. I (literally) wouldn't reap the benefits of my investment.
Another farm example is that under Regime #1 I will rotate my crops to keep my land in good shape whereas under Regime #2 I will use up the land and then move on to another piece because it is all open access. [Note by Admin: I think he means the other way around. Does this need correction?]
The main characteristic I will look at in the first run through with the paper is efficiency. Because the costs and benefits are more fully internalized in a private property regime they are more likely to be efficient in terms of producing near the point at which marginal costs=marginal benefits.
Now, the way I am going to try to apply this to baseball is to say that the property rights of owners in Pro Yakyu are probably more similar to the private property regime than MLB is. That is not to say that MLB is like an open access property regime, but just that the luxury tax and revenue sharing make MLB more like a common property regime than Pro Yakyu is. I think there should be some inefficiencies resulting from that, and one place I will look for it is in the salary distribution. Three other areas I might look at are scouting expenses as a percentage of total expenses, marketing expenses as a percentage of total expenses, and finally competitive balance.
Thanks for the question. I hope this helps.
League Team Total High Avg.
====== ======== ======= ==== ====
Central Giants 44.9880 7.2 6816
Yakult 22.1775 2.0 3360
Chunichi 31.8770 3.0 4688
Hanshin 23.2470 2.4 3369
Hiroshima 17.7230 1.7 2606
Yokohama 23.6755 2.5 2441
Pacific Seibu 27.4610 3.5 4359
Osaka 26.7710 5.0 3937
Daiei 20.9930 2.1 3280
Lotte 21.8690 2.1 3264
Nippon Ham 20.3870 3.0 3185
Orix 19.6420 2.0 3069
I couldn't find yearly team salaries after a few Googles, but the Giants are consistantly #1 in salary, finishing first or 4th. (I don't remember them ending any lower.)
Nonetheless, you can see how most of the money is in the Central League, and how the Giants have most of it.
The three factors you proposed to research bear much less into Pro Yakyu owners' behavior than The Giants Factor. At least, that is so for the Central League with a range from 17.7 to almost 45 oku yen.
The Pacific League may actually pan out to support your hypothesis. The top teams have the top salaries, and the difference from top to bottom is less than 8-oku yen.
Another important factor that you're leaving out is how the ball club is thought of in terms of the parent corporation. Yokohama, under Maruha, was moving toward being independent of the parent company for several years. However, with TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) buying them last year, there's a chance that they'll become tightly regulated by non-baseball corporate types. (I'm not saying that's good or bad, but that the way in which they're managed may change.)
I think Daiei makes a good example of a team put under pressure from its parent company. They've got the 4th lowest salary over all, and had been Pacific League champions as recently as 1999 and 2000. Even when they won, their salaries didn't inflate that much due to Daiei Group's financial troubles. And the really strange thing is that the team brings in huge crowds in Kyushu. They're adored by their city on a level only the Giants and Tigers can beat. As a ball club, they've got to be in better financial shape than most others. Yet because they're part of a corporation that isn't fairing well in the down-turned economy, the team suffers with the rest of the Daiei Group.
I don't know if I explained all of this very well. I'm lacking sleep lately. This was the only data I could come up with that might aid in your research. And these other points are not only important to your question, but most questions that researchers (from junior high reports through Master's Thesis writers) have. I just hope someone can elaborate on these ideas in a more coherent manner.
+--------+------+----------+---------+
| League | Team | Sum | Players |
+--------+------+---------+---------+
| CL | CD | 363,610 | 70 |
| CL | HC | 191,340 | 69 |
| CL | HT | 268,970 | 71 |
| CL | YBS | 277,595 | 68 |
| CL | YG | 461,280 | 68 |
| CL | YS | 235,975 | 68 |
| PL | CLM | 227,290 | 69 |
| PL | FDH | 232,070 | 65 |
| PL | NHF | 210,870 | 66 |
| PL | OBu | 276,110 | 70 |
| PL | OBW | 200,920 | 66 |
| PL | SL | 286,110 | 64 |
+--------+------+---------+---------+
The sums are in units of man (10,000) yen and include the field manager, but no other staff personnel (coaches or front office).
If acuracy is important, I'd recommend writing (snail-mail or faxing) the teams. Contact information is here. (And, no, none of the teams have an e-mail address to the best of my knowledge.)
It seems that the half dozen or so people who have done research on this in the past have kept the information to themselves as none have ever returned to share the information with us. If you do find one that's posted his/her report to the Web, please let us know. And feel free to be the first, too (on your own site or post it here - even the raw data without the report would be useful).
This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
Because I get quite a few business related questions off forum to which I usually reply, "I don't really know about the business end of things," I figure that it's best to get some of these questions out in the forums since some of you do have such an interest and perhaps can help out more.
To this particular question, the answers are
Well, that was easy.
But it's also a bit short on details. For example, the lack of revenue sharing actually has non-monetary consequences. Several Pro Yakyu critics point out that there's no way the Giants draw 55,000 fans every game at Tokyo Dome - that many people won't fit. So, why is 55,000 reported every game? Why do most teams round to the higher unit of 1,000? While I can't pinpoint the reason, the thing that doesn't prevent it is that the gate revenue goes to the home team only. So reporting higher numbers through the gate does not negatively effect the team so far as money goes. If the gate take were split between the two teams playing, you'd see attendence calculated to the single digit.
Furthermore, this is a major reason that the Central League teams are reluctant to give up games (particularly home games) against the Giants and allow inter-league play. The visiting Giants always bring big crowds. Those "home away from home" games that the Giants play tend to also be in largely populated areas (Fukuoka and Sapporo), not the countryside like many other teams do.
The closest thing to a luxury tax would be the 1.5 times a player's previous year salary for free agents. Considering that the only team that can afford the free agent tax of top free agents is the Giants, it's yet another example of how the system is loaded in the Giants' favor. (Are you starting to get an idea as to why there are so many anti-Giants fans?)
While there is no cap on salary, there is a cap on how much a draftee may sign for, including signing bonus. It seems to me that the cap went up either last year or this (I don't have the full data with me right now). This was done to try to even out bidding wars for top prospects who would be promised higher salaries from a particular team to refuse to sign with another team - wait three years then sign with them. I don't know what incident started this (like the Egawa Incident was responsible for the gyaku-shimei system, the Irabu Incident was responsible for the Posting System, etc.). Does anybody?
Well, I didn't exactly answer your question in direct financial terms. (I was a computer science major in college - made fun of the business majors. ) But I do hope it helps give some insight to related aspects of Japanese baseball that aren't talked about all that often.