The beautiful gain:what can Brazilian football tell us about the effect of non-compete clauses on wages?

With the 1998 Pelé Law eliminating transfer fees for players whose contracts had expired, Brazilian football provides an ideal setting to test the effect of non-compete agreements on wages. This analysis reveals that older players gained the most, whereas the wages of young players fell, which has wider implications for policies on the use of non-competes amongst low- and high-income employees, write Bernardo Guimarães, João Paulo Pessoa, and Vladimir Ponczek (all Sao Paulo School of Economics-FGV).