This study examines the empirical relation between football players’ wage income and financial development at the individual level. Using a large panel dataset of 237,631 football players from 153 countries from 2010 to 2020 and the International Monetary Fund's Financial Development Indices, we show that financial development significantly raises players’ wages. Players’ wages increase by 25.77% as the Financial Development Index rises by one standard deviation. Our main findings are robust to using subindices of financial development and instrumental variable regressions. We further point out that football players of low capability, with low wages, and who play for low-reputation clubs benefit more from financial development.

We characterize the relationship between the rent-to-price ratio, expected returns, and expected rent growth in a dynamic housing valuation model, where the middle-aged-to-young (MY) ratio determines the slowly evolving mean of the rent-to-price ratio. The link between demographic trends and the housing market dynamics is established by analyzing how individuals’ housing demand varies across age cohorts using household-level survey data. Empirical results show that deviations of the rent-to-price ratio from its slowly evolving mean, which is determined by the MY ratio, exhibit pronounced predictive power for returns but weak predictive power for rent growth. Further analysis reveals heterogeneous evidence across sample cities.