UAH Economics Program

Burrito economics? Breakfast economics? Danielle Wiener-Bronner actually gives us quite a bit to think about (munch on?) in this article about Chipotle (one of my personal favorite eateries), but I especially like the little bit of labor economics in the last few paragraphs. When Wiener-Bronner writes of difficulty recruiting workers in a "tight labor market," she's speaking of the presence of a shortage of labor in the relevant market: the quantity of labor demanded exceeds the quantity of labor supplied at a prevailing compensation level, and natural market forces exert upward pressure on wages to move things toward equilibrium. When we learn that Chipotle is "trying to attract workers by encouraging mobility within the company, offering quarterly bonuses and...teaching unique skills...," we get an idea how this one employer in the market for restaurant labor is taking steps that increase compensation in creative ways, thus contributing to the eventual resolution of that labor shortage. Those "unique skills" Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol touts "transfer...to other opportunities in the restaurant industry," marking those skills as "general" in one sense (making workers more productive beyond Chipotle) but "specific" in another sense (making workers particularly more productive in the restaurant industry, though not likely in any other industry). In my labor economics course at UAH, ECN 475 (also available for masters students, ECN 575), we learn all about the workings of labor markets and the nature of worker training. The Chipotle story offers a nice application.

Chipotle CEO says breakfast is off the table ... for now Chipotle wants to keep growing. Just not in the morning.

Unfathomably, Alan Krueger is gone. He was a truly great labor economist who perhaps eventually would have been awarded the Nobel Prize. As the article discusses, Kruger helped change the way we think about the economic implications of the minimum wage -- no small achievement. I discuss this extensively in ECN 475 (Labor Economics) at UAH. His is a stunning, monumental loss.

Alan Krueger, famed economist, dies at age 58 Former White House economist and Princeton University professor Alan Krueger died over the weekend, the school announced Monday. He was 58.

Students who take my course Sports Economics (ECN 406) at UAH learn some economics of leagues, which includes coming to terms with the intuition of league expansion and the equilibrium formation of league expansion fees. Those fees simultaneously reflect expected net benefits of expansion that accrue to the expansion franchise and to existing franchises in the league, and typically range in the high hundreds of millions of dollars. Appropriately, then, the Seattle NHL franchise will pay a fee of $650 million, but maybe more importantly (as the article indicates) this fee is $150 million higher than the Vegas Golden Knights fee: a sign of NHL growth and the anticipated joint benefit of the Seattle hockey market. Applied microeconomics, baby.

It's unanimous: Seattle gets NHL expansion team Seattle has been granted an expansion team for the 2021-22 NHL season. The team will play at a renovated KeyArena and compete in the league's Pacific Division.

In my course Sports Economics (ECN 406), which I have taught at UAH since Spring 2009, students learn of how sports organizations have many sources of revenue, including media revenue, and they learn other things about the role of media and media rights as well. This article illustrates how media revenue is now king, even more prominent in the sports industry than gate revenue, collectively speaking.

Media rights are North American sports' largest source of revenue, and are set to keep rising Media rights fees across North American sports have grown 286 percent since 2005, and have become the largest source of revenue.