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This article provides an overview of compensation and reward schemes in professional automobile racing (NASCAR). Data from the 1998 and 1999 racing seasons show that although end-of-season rewards are highly nonlinear, individual races offer rewards that are more linear. Given that the general conditions for a rank order tournament do exist, this may indicate that the reward scheme is inefficient. Several hypotheses are suggested to explain why NASCAR would create such a reward structure. Vital to the investigation is the fact that teams attempt to maximize a profit function more complex than those in other individual sports. In addition, drivers may exhibit excessively aggressive behavior that would be exacerbated by nonlinear compensation, as described by Lazear. Analysis shows that the need to maintain sponsorship exposure, combined with drivers’ willingness to take risks (and the possible catastrophic result of negative outcomes), creates a competitive environment where winner-take-all would be inefficient.

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We add to the literature on migration and earnings by showing how migration affects one particularly highly skilled set of migrants: European hockey players. We examine salary differentials using a sample of newly signed free agents from the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons. We also apply several new productivity measures that sharpen the specification of the wage equation, especially regarding productivity on defense and special teams play. We find that European players receive a premium relative to otherwise identical Canadian and US-born players. We present evidence that this premium is due to the greater mobility of European players and their resulting access to alternative employment possibilities.