Roger Noll

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Roger Noll was born on the 13th of March, 1940. He made his career as an economist who brought careful economic analysis to organized sport. His institutional home was Stanford University, where he eventually became emeritus professor of economics. The questions that drove him were fundamental ones. Did markets in sport obey the same pressures as markets elsewhere? What implications should that have for how governments regulate athletic competition? In 1983, the Guggenheim Foundation awarded him a Fellowship in economics, an early sign that those questions were generating answers the field valued.

• 2. Sport, Stadiums, and Regulation

  ›

  The construction of professional sports stadiums is among the economic questions Noll is best known for examining. Stadiums are expensive facilities built to serve privately owned sports franchises. They typically draw in some measure on public funding. Whether those arrangements produce proportionate public benefit is precisely what sports economics can investigate. At the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Noll is both a fellow and the director of the Program in Regulatory Policy. That second role extends his interests beyond sport into the broader mechanics of how governments structure market rules.

  Noll has also testified against the NCAA in multiple court cases, bringing that same economic approach to the governance of college athletics. His appearances against the organization across several federal proceedings include the case known as O'Bannon v. NCAA. With that case among his court appearances, Noll's economic analysis of sport entered the federal legal record. It can be drawn on in future disputes over the governance of athletics.