has discrimination lessened over time a test using baseball s all star vote i introduction the objective of this analysis is to examine changes in racial discrimination over time the labor market literature indicates that black white wage differentials have declined substantially in the last 45 years and most of that decline came before 1980 1 however the degree to which this was due to altered attitudes among whites increased productivity among blacks or corrective legislation is debated 2 most studies are not able to effectively test the hypothesis of changes in attitudes as attitudes are very difficult to observe some activities may be very indicative of attitudes though take voting for baseball s annual all star game each all star vote is cast anonymously the voter gets neither praise nor censure the cost of voting is low ballots are freely supplied at ballparks and filling them out takes but a minute or two to a large degree the reward is in the voting itself the voter is able to express his her opinion on an issue of interest there are no rules to be followed a fan can vote for a player because of his ability reputation performance team age appearance color or anything else the all star vote is as close to a pure expression of preference as is likely to be found if fans prefer white players to black all else equal black players should receive fewer votes than equivalent whites if those preferences change the vote differential should change in tandem this is the test that this article applies in an examination of all star voting from 1970 to 1996 baseball has long been a useful source of discrimination studies it has a clear and unambiguous history of discrimination in which owners players and fans have all been implicated 3 there are two particular advantages in looking to baseball for evidence of changes in discriminatory attitudes baseball has not been as directly influenced by the equal opportunity and affirmative action laws that are argued to have helped close the black white wage gap and baseball productivity can be controlled for in a relatively precise fashion while changes in the wage gap may have a variety of causes changes in an all star vote gap more plausibly reflect changes in attitudes therefore if we find the variance in all star votes unexplained by other factors and correlated with race has shrunk over time we will take it as support for the hypothesis that discriminatory attitudes have weakened the article will proceed as follows section ii discusses the all star vote and the underlying model section iii presents the analysis section iv concludes ii the all star game baseball s all star game has been played every year and twice per year for a short period since 1933 with the exception of the war year of 1945 it is held in the middle of the season and pits the best players from each of major league baseball s mlb two leagues the national and the american against each other various methods of selecting all star teams have gone in and out of vogue the game was first established through the efforts of arch ward sports editor of the chicago tribune as a special part of the 1933 chicago world s fair ballots were printed in the tribune and in several other major newspapers and fans voted for their favorite stars fan voting was dropped two years later in favor of selection by baseball s managers only to be re instituted in 1947 and abandoned a second time after ballot stuffing by cincinnati reds fans led to the election of seven reds to the starting line up in 1957 from 1958 to 1969 the starting all star line ups were chosen by a vote of the players themselves in 1970 baseball commissioner bowie kuhn re established the fan vote amid much ballyhoo the new system was a popular success and has remained in place ever since this study analyzes and compares fan votes over 26 years it begins with 1970 the year that the fan vote was re established ends with 1996 and fills in the middle with the votes of 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1980 1985 and 1990

better schools less crime i estimate the impact of attending a first choice middle or high school on adult crime using data from public school choice lotteries in charlotte mecklenburg school district cms seven years after random assignment lottery winners had been arrested for fewer serious crimes and had spent fewer days incarcerated the gain in school quality as measured by peer and teacher inputs was equivalent to moving from one of the lowest ranked schools to one at the district average the reduction in crime comes largely from years after enrollment in the preferred school is complete the impacts are concentrated among high risk youth who commit about 50 less crime across several different outcome measures and scalings of crime by severity i find suggestive evidence that school quality explains more of the impact in high school whereas peer effects are more important in middle school copyright 2011 oxford university press

the nba and the influx of international basketball players the determinants of salaries for professional athletes in the national basketball association nba are examined to investigate how international athletes have fared relative to athletes trained in the united states it is found that international basketball players were paid a large premium above other players of similar skills and characteristics for the 1996 97 and 1997 98 seasons after which the premium disappeared this temporary premium is likely attributable to a winner s curse experienced by nba teams before investing significant resources in scouting and evaluating international players

why do black basketball players work more for less money abstract we explore kahn and sherer s finding that national basketball association players salaries are lower for black than white players in general we do not find evidence that this salary differential is due to the racial preferences of fans specifically we observe that black players actually play more than comparable white players we offer a theory of price discrimination based on relative supplies and supply elasticities in lieu of the racial discrimination argument as an explanation for the black white wage differential

migration trends and earnings of free agents in major league baseball 1976 1979 this paper is an empirical investigation of the effect of team characteristics on the migration pattern of free agents in major league baseball during the period 1976 1979 the results indicate that high quality free agents tend to leave winning teams and move to teams in cities with large or rapidly growing populations the compensation paid to free agents is shown to depend on these team characteristics as well as the players personal characteristics and market conditions

what went wrong the erosion of relative earnings and employment among young black men in the 1980s this paper shows a widening in black white earnings and employment gaps among young men from the mid 1970s through the 1980s earnings gaps increased most among college graduates and in the midwest while gaps in employment population rates grew most among dropouts we attribute the differential widening to shifts in demand for subgroups due to shifting industry and regional employment the falling real minimum wage and deunionization the growing supply of black to white workers that was marked among college graduates and to increased crime among dropouts the different factors affecting subgroups highlight the economic diversity of black americans

local pay determination theoretical models of local pay are reviewed ranging from neoclassical perspectives unemployment wage trade off models and segmented labor market approaches the empirical work on u s north south differentials is discussed for the u k studies of the extent of and trends in geographical pay differentials are considered as well as behavioral explanations focusing on the role of excess demand the issue of adjustment processes is then discussed both in theory and in relation to empirical work for the u s and u k this discussion focuses largely on geographical spillover effects in terms of origins evidence and issues of identification finally the impact of certain impediments in the adjustment process are considered specifically in relation to the u k these concern the role and influence of national wage bargaining as well as factors inhibiting labor migration stemming from the housing market and the climate of the national labor market copyright 1992 by blackwell publishers ltd

strike three discrimination incentives and evaluation major league baseball umpires express their racial ethnic preferences when they evaluate pitchers strikes are called less often if the umpire and pitcher do not match race ethnicity but mainly where there is little scrutiny of umpires pitchers understand the incentives and throw pitches that allow umpires less subjective judgment e g fastballs over home plate when they anticipate bias these direct and indirect effects bias performance measures of minorities downward the results suggest how discrimination alters discriminated groups behavior generally they imply that biases in measured productivity must be accounted for in generating measures of wage discrimination

subjective performance and the value of blind evaluation we investigate the incentive and project screening effects of anonymity in a setting of subjective performance evaluation if the review process is blind then the applicant s payoff relevant type is hidden from the reviewer if the process is nonblind or informed then the reviewer observes the applicant s type directly in either case the evaluator receives a noisy signal on the quality of the agent s project and decides whether to accept or reject it we find that if the signal is not verifiable then informed evaluation results in an excessively steep equilibrium acceptance policy the standard applied to low ability applicants is too stringent and the standard applied to high ability applicants is too lenient blind review in which all applicants face the same standard often provides better incentives but it discards valuable information for screening projects we discover that blind review is more likely to be preferred by the evaluator when 1 the applicant pool is skewed toward high ability types 2 the stakes from acceptance are relatively high for applicants 3 both types of errors are relatively less costly or 4 there is little competition among reviewers we also discover that under blind review the evaluator may benefit from a more diverse applicant pool

earnings functions when wages and prices vary by location economists generally assume implicitly that the return to schooling is invariant across local labor markets we demonstrate that this outcome pertains if and only if preferences are homothetic a special case that seems unlikely our theory predicts that returns to education will instead be relatively low in expensive high amenity locations our analysis of u s data provides support for this contention returns to college are especially low in such cities as san francisco and seattle our findings call into question standard empirical exercises in labor economics that treat the returns to education as a single parameter

when being in the minority pays off relationships among sellers and price setting in the champagne industry economic sociologists have studied how social relationships shape market prices by focusing mostly on vertical interactions between buyers and sellers in this article we examine instead the price consequences of horizontal relationships that arise from intergroup processes among sellers our setting is the market for champagne grapes using proprietary transaction level data we find that female grape growers a minority in the growers community charge systematically higher prices than do male grape growers we argue that the underlying mechanism for this unexpected pattern of results involves the relationships developed and maintained by minority members specifically in depth fieldwork reveals that female growers get together to compensate for their isolation from the majority this behavior enables them to overcome local constraints on the availability of price relevant information constraints that stem from prevailing norms of market behavior individualism and secrecy we discuss the implications

quality of life firm productivity and the value of amenities across canadian cities we estimate quality of life and productivity differences across canada s metropolitan areas in a hedonic general equilibrium framework these are based on the estimated willingness to pay of heterogeneous households and firms to locate in various cities which differ in their wage levels housing costs and land values using 2006 canadian census data our metropolitan quality of life estimates are somewhat consistent with popular rankings yet find canadians care more about climate and culture quality of life is highest in victoria for anglophones montreal for francophones and vancouver for allophones and lowest in more remote cities toronto is canada s most productive city vancouver is the overall most valuable city qualite de vie productivite des entreprises et la valeur des avantages dans les diverses villes canadiennes on evalue les differences entre la qualite de vie et la productivite des entreprises entre les zones metropolitaines au canada a l aide d un cadre d analyse d equilibre general hedonique ces metriques sont basees sur l estimation de la volonte de payer de menages et d entreprises heterogenes pour se localiser dans diverses villes qui different tant pour ce qui est des niveaux de salaires des couts de l habitation et des prix des terrains a l aide des donnees du recensement canadien de 2006 on construit des evaluations de la qualite de vie des diverses zones metropolitaines qui s arriment convenablement aux ordonnancements en vogue mais on decouvre que les canadiens portent une attention particuliere au climat et a la culture la qualite de vie est la plus elevee a victoria pour les anglophones a montreal pour les francophones et a vancouver pour les allophones et la plus faible pour les villes eloignees des grands centres toronto est la ville la plus productive vancouver est generalement la plus appreciee

public conservation land and employment growth in the northern forest region we quantify the effect that public conservation lands have on employment growth in the northern forest region of the united states a model of simultaneous employment and net migration growth is estimated with data on non metropolitan counties from 1990 to 1997 exogenous variables include the 1990 share of the land base in public conservation uses we find that net migration rates were higher in counties with more conservation lands but the effects are relatively small no significant effect on employment growth is detected as well variables measuring changes in public timber harvests have no effect on employment growth

customer racial discrimination in major league baseball most studies of racial discrimination concentrate on identifying the existence rather than the source of discrimination in contrast this paper tests directly for racial discrimination by major league baseball customers by examining the market for baseball cards in tobit regressions the market prices of cards consistently reflect player performance records and other demand variables when interactive race productivity variables are included in the models a significant and complex pattern of fan discrimination against black pitchers and black hitters is found discrimination against latin players is not found

what shapes player performance in soccer empirical findings from a panel analysis in this article we investigate the pay performance relationship of soccer players using individual data from eight seasons of the german soccer league bundesliga we find a nonlinear pay performance relationship indicating that salary does indeed affect individual performance the results further show that player performance is affected not only by absolute income level but also by relative income position an additional analysis of the performance impact of team effects provides evidence of a direct impact of team mate attributes on individual player performance

changes in the u s wage structure 1963 1987 application of quantile regression the 1980 s witnessed rapid changes in the structure of wages in the united states in this study recently developed techniques for quantile regression are applied to every march current population survey since 1964 and changes in the return to schooling and experience at different points of the wage distribution are examined the quantile regression technique parsimoniously describes the entire conditional wage distribution this conditional distribution is used to examine changes in within group wage inequality as measured by the difference between conditional quantiles two linear models are considered a simple one group model and a 16 group model the results suggest that the returns to schooling and experience differ across quantiles of the wage distribution but their patterns of change are similar significant differences in wage inequality are also found across the various skill groups the paper also presents a new imputation method for cps data

regional wage differentials and the spatial convergence of worker characteristic prices this paper provides a test for variation in wage structures across regions the authors suggest that the appropriate test for structural variation incorporates a combination of two lines of research structural variation and compensating variation the model of earnings determination used implies that while job characteristic prices may be subject to stochastic shocks or industry specific factors and hence may differ between regions the returns to human capital characteristics will be regionally invariant the results suggest that the theoretical expectations of regional homogeneity is generally supported for the decade of the 1970s copyright 1989 by mit press

racial discrimination and professional basketball salaries in the 1990s racial differences in professional basketball player salaries are examined to determine whether the 20 premium paid to whites in the mid 1980s has persisted into the 1990s ols and tobit regressions indicate no difference between white and black salaries controlling for player and team characteristics for the 1994 95 season however censored quantile regressions show substantial racial differences at certain points in the salary distribution whites earn less than blacks at the lower end of the distribution although the difference is not statistically significant and varies with minutes played in contrast whites receive a significant premium 18 at the upper end of the salary distribution these findings are consistent with a form of consumer discrimination in which sports fans prefer to see white star players all else equal

labor market effects of september 11th on arab and muslim residents of the united states we investigated whether the september 11 2001 terrorists attacks had any effect on employment earnings and residential mobility of first and second generation arab and muslim men in the united states we find that september 11th did not significantly affect employment and hours of work of arab and muslim men but was associated with a 9 11 percent decline in their real wage and weekly earnings with some evidence that this decline was temporary the adverse earnings effects were strongly linked to hate crime incidence estimates also suggest that the terrorists attacks reduced intrastate migration of arab and muslim men

the influence of entrepreneur s personal characteristics on mses growth through innovation abstractresearch in the separate areas of innovation and growth has considerably intensified in recent years however little scholarly attention has been paid to the entrepreneurs personal characteristics that might explain the growth of micro and small enterprises mses through innovation this study examines the key entrepreneurs personal characteristics affecting micro and small enterprises mses upgrading defined here as substantial growth through innovation six major determining types of entrepreneurs characteristics were identified from the innovation and the growth literature education work experience gender motivations nationality and age the empirical results which are based on t tests of the differences between upgraders and non upgraders the linear probability model and the logit model all suggest that work experience and motivations are cornerstones in the likelihood that an mse will upgrade the policy implications of this study on promoting mses upgrading are also discussed

nationality preferences for labour in the international football industry this paper tests consumer and co worker nationalistic preferences by measuring the effect of team nationality composition on fan attendance and overall team quality using professional football teams in the world s five largest football leagues little evidence is found to support the hypothesis that fans or co workers discriminate based upon the player s nationality thus the under representation of various nationalities can be concluded to originate from a club s ownership and or management these results are similar to the racial bias revealed by english club owners as found by szymanski and preston

customer discrimination and employment outcomes for minority workers this paper investigates the effects of customer discrimination on the employment and earnings of minorities particularly blacks data are used from a new survey of employers in four large metropolitan areas in the united states our results show that the racial composition of an establishment s customers has sizable effects on the race of who gets hired particularly in jobs that involve direct contact with customers and in sales or service occupations race of customers also affects wages with employees in establishments that have mostly black customers earning less than those in establishments with mostly white customers

consumption benefits of national hockey league game trips estimated from revealed and stated preference demand data this paper examines the demand for hockey game trips among metropolitan and nonmetropolitan residents of alberta canada using data on both revealed and stated preference game trip behavior from a telephone survey conducted throughout alberta we estimate the effect of ticket prices team quality arena amenities and capacity on the latent demand for national hockey league hockey games we nd that lower ticket prices higher team quality and additional capacity encourage attendance in the status quo scenario consumer surplus per game is 50 for those who had attended hockey games and about 50 less for those who had not attended games exploiting the stated preference data we develop a number of other consumer surplus estimates we also include travel costs in the estimation of the demand function and estimate the full value of the game trip considering both ticket prices and travel costs sold out arenas in calgary and edmonton generate annual consumption bene ts of 40 and 35 million when only ticket prices are used to calculate consumer surplus i e excluding travel costs considering the full price consumer surplus for the calgary flames of 103 per game trip the annual consumption bene ts may be as high as 82 million jel r22 l83 d61

voting behavior discrimination and the national baseball hall of fame we investigate whether black latin and white major league baseball players receive the same consideration by the baseball writers association of america in voting for membership into the national baseball hall of fame the first stage of heckman s two step procedure indicates that the probability a black player will ever receive at least one vote is significantly lower than that for his white counterpart the second stage suggests that race or ethnicity sometimes matter in determining the number of votes a candidate receives for hall of fame membership jel j7 d72

the visible hand race and online market outcomes we examine the effect of race on market outcomes by selling ipods through local online classified advertisements throughout the us each advertisement features a photograph including a dark or light skinned hand or one with a wrist tattoo black sellers receive fewer and lower offers than white sellers and the correspondence with black sellers indicates lower levels of trust black sellers outcomes are particularly poor in thin markets suggesting that discrimination may not survive competition among buyers and those with the most racial isolation and property crime consistent with channels through which statistical discrimination might operate economic outcomes in the us are highly correlated with race but the causal mechanisms underlying these correlations are not well understood in particular it remains unclear how much of the correlation is due to discrimination and how much is due to other characteristics that are correlated with race such as education there is an extensive literature on the effect of race on market outcomes focusing on both labour and goods including housing markets however discrimination is not a monolithic phenomenon and it is important to investigate its extent and causes in a variety of different contexts across which they may differ our study asks the following question when the typical person engages in a consumer transaction usually as a buyer does he or she try to avoid dealing with minority sellers and does she treat minority sellers differently

union membership in the united states 1973 1981 this paper reports estimates of union membership gathered from may current population surveys from 1973 to 1981 the authors present data by occupation industry selected states and smsas race gender and educational attainment the paper both extends and differs from that by freeman and medoff which presents unionism estimates for the private sector for 1968 75 to facilitate longitudinal analysis this paper reports three year moving averages of occupational and industry data and annual estimates of demographic classifications the data include public sector as well as private sector workers and they exclude workers not covered by the national labor relations act also the authors provide only union membership estimates not estimates on workers covered by union contracts this paper suggests that the percentage of all workers that are unionized in the united states remained fairly constant over the 1973 81 period

urban population and amenities the neoclassical model of location we develop a neoclassical general equilibrium model to explain cross metro variation in population and density we provide new methods to estimate traded and non traded productivities and elasticities of housing and land supply using density and land area data from wage and housing cost indices the model explains half of u s density and population variation and finds that quality of life determines location choices more than trade productivity productivity and factor substitution in housing matter most but are weak in nicer areas relaxing land use regulations would increase population in the west raising both quality of life and productivity experienced by residents

should nfl blackouts be banned in this paper the authors examine the economic and policy implications of the national football league nfl blackout rule a league rule that prohibits local television broadcast of games that are not sold out at least 72 hours prior to game time the foundation for understanding and assessing the impact of the blackout rule is an analysis of attendance using data on games during the 1996 1997 national football league season expanding on previous research three separate components of attendance season ticket sales game day ticket sales and game day noshows are examined in detail accounting for the endogeneity of key variables tobit and probit analyses are used to estimate and predict individual game attendance these empirical estimates are then used as a vehicle to assess the implications of game day blackouts and the potential for public policy intervention more specifically the authors begin by estimating the impact of the blackout on game day attendance using these estimates they asses

the coase theorem free agency and major league baseball a panel study of pitcher mobility from 1961 to 1992 a great deal of conceptual and empirical work in the economic analysis of the law and property rights has been directed towards resolving a controversy surrounding the coase theorem many economists and legal scholars interpret the theorem as containing two propositions the first is that in the absence of transactions costs and wealth effects parties will bargain to an efficient outcome the second holds that the same outcome will be achieved regardless of the distribution of property rights the latter is known as the invariance thesis and it has been a source of dispute among scholars and between economic theorists and owners of economic enterprises e g owners of professional sports teams 5 11 16 23 24 25 26 28 29 this paper provides an econometric test of the invariance proposition major league baseball presents a natural experiment consisting of an industry in which there has been an explicit change in the assignment of property rights beginning in 1879 the reserve clause gave monopsony power to team owners a player could negotiate salary only with the team that owned his contract and the team could trade or sell the player as management saw fit in 1976 this system was replaced by the institution of free agency whereby a player with at least six years of major league experience acquired

alternative models of earnings determination and labor market structures there are three distinct research traditions in the analysis of individual earnings determination human capital or earnings function analyses aggregate wage analyses and labor demand analyses an important and incongruous aspect of each is the treatment of geographical differences in labor markets this paper first investigates the magnitude and character of geographical wage differentials the sizable differences discovered there are then related to the existing and highly simplified models of labor market differences while the two major classes of models compensating differentials and labor demand differ significantly in assumptions and implications it is impossible to distinguish adequately between them there appears to be a clear need for more structural analyses of labor market operations

using baseball card prices to measure star quality and monopsony i introduction measuring productivity presents problems in many areas of economics this is especially true in sports economics where appropriate indicators of individual productivity apart from team productivity have been the subject of much debate and where the issue of fairness in compensation has become especially contentious in recent years due to the extremely high salaries being paid to participants baseball has been studied more widely than any other sport largely because of the vast amount of data that has been assembled for it and its fairly well defined indicators hits home runs earned run averages eras and so on however even in this sport controversies over productivity and compensation continue problems were severe enough in 1994 to have resulted in a 232 day general strike and the first ever cancellation of the world series events that are estimated to have cost major league baseball mlb and the economy close to 1 billion 1 this research will utilize baseball card prices a relatively neglected source of market evaluation of players reflecting their value to the ultimate consumer to measure the important but intangible characteristic of star quality or charisma possessed by some players star quality which exists over and above productivity as indicated in official game statistics is generally acknowledged to bring fans to the stadiums and impact team revenues in a significant way this research will determine a numerical measure of star quality as the residual in a model of baseball card prices based on traditional performance variables we shall use this in the computation of a total productivity figure for a sample of baseball players for the period leading up to the strike of 1994 from this we will derive a measure of the players marginal revenue product mrp and examine the issue of monopsonistic exploitation by comparing this expanded mrp to the players salaries ii monopsonistic exploitation the institutional arrangements and operating policies of mlb have acted to restrict mobility in that labor market and have led to numerous charges of monopsonistic exploitation over the years historically players were drafted into a team and reserved to employment by that team alone unless they were traded to another team at the discretion of management however several lawsuits and labor grievances in the 1970s resulted in the introduction of free agency which limits a team s control over a player to six years the mlb players association argues that even this shortened restrictive period together with the collusive operating policies permitted under baseball s special exemption from antitrust laws gives rise to monopsonistic exploitation this implies that many players receive less than their mrp to their team this sentiment was an element in the players rejection of management s position in the 1994 contract negotiations which led to the strike that canceled part of two seasons previous research on measuring productivity roger noll 1974 was one of the first researchers to study baseball productivity and one of the few to address the issue of star quality noll attempted to capture the star quality effect by entering the number of star players on a team as an explanatory variable in his attendance regression other researchers have advanced the technique for determining productivity from performance statistics but have not addressed the star quality factor directly the productivity study of scully 1974 focused on a player s slugging percentage total number of bases divided by total at bats as the statistic with the greatest influence on a team s winning percentage and hence on team revenues using 1968 69 data scully found that a one point increase in a team s slugging percentage increased total team revenue by over 9 500 medoff 1976 focused on runs scored as the major indicator of player performance as it contributed to team revenues in 1972 74

wage differentials across labor markets and workers does cost of living matter wage differentials studies rarely account for interarea differences in cost of living owing both to data limitations and theoretical ambiguity this study develops a price index for 185 metropolitan areas comprising about 70 of the u s labor force current population survey data for 1985 95 and data on sitespecific amenities are used to estimate earnings differentials based on nominal wages wages fully adjusted for measured cost of living and a simple approximation of real wages with partial adjustment for pricelevel differences dispersion in approximate real wages across 185 labor markets and differentials by region and city size are substantially lower than dispersion in nominal or full adjustment wages estimates of racial and ethnic differentials display moderate sensitivity to choice of a wage measure whereas other standard differentials do not both nominal wages and wages fully adjusted for cost of living may provide misleading estimates of real wage differentials absent data on interarea prices and amenities researchers should include detailed controls for region and city size in nominal wage equations jel j31 r23

new estimates of climate demand evidence from location choice abstract we develop and apply to census data a new method for estimating climate demand the method is useful for ranking quality of life based upon a willingness to pay criterion our two major findings are that the willingness to pay quality of life index is correlated with the hedonic approach s ranking but that the migration approach generates much larger estimates of willingness to pay for a more moderate climate this finding is relevant for evaluating the economic impact of global warming

the importance of bundling in a gorman lancaster model of earnings the idea that the labor market of individuals can be decomposed into payments to separate productive attributes has an enduring appeal in economics assuming that demographic groups differ only in their endowments of productive characteristics it is possible to rationalize observed demographic earnings differentials without invoking the arguments that characteristics specific to a particular demographic group are direct objects of employer demand by aggregating skills over all demographic groups it is possible to produce a theory of the market determination of the prices of skills held in different amounts by different demographic groups this paper considers conditions under which characteristics are uniformly priced across sectors of a multisector economy the paper presents empirical evidence that rejects uniform pricing of characteristics as a description of the us labor market bundling may account for this evudence but other hypotheses do as well authors

customer racial discrimination in the market for memorabilia the case of baseball because consumer discrimination can reduce productivity it is often impossible to tell whether differential productivity is the effect of discrimination or of differential ability detailed data for the sports labor market make it possible to separate consumer discrimination from ability we use a unique approach to determine whether the entertainment value of baseball players is related to their race we examine whether race directly affects the value of a player in the market for baseball cards in contrast to studies that use salaries there is no room for owner or coworker discrimination our evidence supports the hypothesis of consumer discrimination

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

ethnicity productivity and salary player compensation and discrimination in the national hockey league the paper considers the impact of potential minority francophone american european ethnic language culture discrimination on salary determination in the national hockey league using player salary data for the 1989 90 season a regression model of salary determination is constructed which includes variables measuring productivity skills market structure and allows for several ethnic influences including minority discrimination ethnically shaped consumer preferences and reservation wages the basic conclusion is that wages are principally determined by productivity and market structure and the only evidence of discrimination is found in the ethnically influenced consumer preference of american as opposed to canadian teams

accounting for south non south real wage differentials and for changes in those differentials over time a unified accounting framework for analyzing differences in real wages between the south and non south in 1979 and for changes in south non south wage ratios between 1973 and 1979 is outlined cross section analysis of real wage differentials allows two sources of regional wage variation 1 worker and job characteristics and 2 returns to those characteristics our results suggest that differences in the latter may be as important in accounting for regional wage differentials as the former an interactive specification permits decomposition of changes in regional wage ratios into direct effects of changes in characteristics and indirect effects of region year and region year variations in returns more than half the predicted changes in south non south wage ratios can be accounted for by changing relative returns to characteristics between the south and non south

identifying productivity and amenity effects in interurban wage differentials this study focuses on the relative importance of amenity and productivity differences in determining wage differentials across urban areas the approach developed takes advantage of the connection between land and labor market clearing conditions required for locational equilibrium of households and firms data on recent movers are used to estimate equilibrium wages and rents for a sample of metropolitan areas this information is then used to identify amenity and productivity components of wages for each city in the sample using national estimates of the relative share of land in consumption and production differences in productivity and amenities are found to be roughly equal sources of wage variation across the sample

do inter city differences in intra city wage differentials have any interesting implications abstract recent research has related characteristics of cities to differences in the distribution of wages across workers with different skill levels we demonstrate that these differences in wage differentials arise naturally as a compensating variation in rosen s theoretical model of inter city wages for example if the income elasticity of demand for housing services is less than unity cities with higher house prices will have smaller money wage differentials between low and high skill workers this result has no implications for differences in either absolute or relative real productivity or welfare of unskilled workers similarly changes in the amenity of an urban area may result in changes in relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers with no implications for real productivity or welfare differentials empirical tests in which housing cost differentials are added as a determinant of inter city differences in an intra urban wage differential model provide empirical confirmation of the theoretical expectations it appears that intra urban money wage differentials differences in the quality of life and variation in the cost of living in each city are jointly determined variables just as rosen s model of inter city wage differentials predicts

wage discrimination in the nba evidence using free agent signings this article takes a step toward understanding potential causes of wage discrimination in an economy highly dependent on the service industry traditionally categorized within the service industry professional sport leagues such as the national basketball association nba provides a unique setting to examine the potential impact of race on salary we analyze free agency contract signings which allow us to better capture the determinants of players wages from 2011 to 2017 to investigate the prominence of wage discrimination in the nba using weighted linear regression models and the oaxaca blinder decomposition we find that black athletes are paid significantly less than their counterparts in addition we also identify the presence of consumer discrimination after controlling the exposure of a player to the audience which is observed through the interaction term between the share of msa population which is white and an identifier for whether a player is black

shirking or stochastic productivity in major league baseball reply firms produce in an uncertain environment the long literature on the theory of the firm under uncertainty has focused on demand uncertainty 4 18 14 the unanimity question 8 15 or technological uncertainty 23 1 7 regarding the latter an interesting question is how that randomness enters the technology one source might be purely unpredictable factors such as the weather or accidents agricultural output for instance is dependent not only on the quantity of inputs hired but on the amount of rainfall natural disasters and the like a different source of technical uncertainty is variations in the quality and reliability of the input services hired in professional sports for example the performance of an athlete varies from game to game and season to season the reliability of capital a crucial issue in nuclear power generation is another example reflecting the stochastic nature of input productivity one economic consequence of this randomness of productivity is that an employer cannot know a priori the input s value but rather must form an estimate of its expected marginal contribution spence 20 showed how an employer uses signals such as educational attainment to determine if a worker is worth hiring once hired the firm still faces the difficulty of determining if a below average realization of productivity resulted from shirking by the employee or a bad draw from his productivity distribution this agency problem outlined in detail by alchain and demsetz 1 and holmstrom 10 has important implications to our perception of work effort especially in the presence of long term labor contracts allegations of shirking due to long term job security have been associated with seniority rights professional athletes and in the academic institution of tenure

death effect on collectible prices it has been widely observed that the price of art or celebrity memorabilia rises around the time of the artist or figure s death previous authors attribute this death effect primarily to expectations on the part of collectors concerning the future supply of collectibles relating to the public figure as in the case of a durable goods monopolist the observations of the sports memorabilia market suggest that the increase in prices is instead due to a nostalgia effect as a result of the media attention that surrounds the death of a prominent public figure

amenities and regional differences in returns to worker characteristics average wages in regions in the united states vary considerably in trying to explain these differences in the average wage across regions a number of studies have found that differences in the returns to characteristics of workers such as years of schooling are as important as differences in the skill composition of the labor force 4 6 10 141 these differences in returns are generally interpreted as reflecting regional differences in demand for worker characteristics coupled with barriers to factor mobility this interpretation is based on the argument that the presence of at least one perfectly mobile factor with perfect information will cause spatial convergence in characteristic prices as that particular factor exploits any spatial price differential 4 p 2161 this paper suggests an alternative to this demand based explanation for regional differences in the structure of wages one based on regional differences in the supply of worker characteristics this explanation does not rely on impediments to the movement of workers or firms and is consistent with an equilibrium view of wages in which regional wage differentials are viewed as compensation for local amenities the theoretical model presented in the following section assumes capital and labor are perfectly mobile with perfect information implying that in equilibrium the utility of workers with similar characteristics is the same in all locations this convergence of utility however does not necessarily imply convergence of characteristic prices equilibrium differences in the returns to a specific worker characteristic can exist if worker characteristics affect an individual s valuation of an area s amenities relative to the individual s demand for land

the sports business as a labor market laboratory with superior data on compensation and productivity as well as the occurrence of abrupt dramatic market structure and player allocation rules changes sports labor markets offer an excellent setting in which to test economic hypotheses this paper reviews evidence from sports in four areas employer monopsony discrimination the coase theorem and incentive contracts supervision and performance there is considerable evidence of monopsony as well as for the existence of some forms of discrimination against minority athletes incentive contracts have strong effects on player performance and behavior and there is mixed evidence on the predictions of the coase theorem

owners incentives during the 2004 05 national hockey league lockout this study shows that firm owners can indirectly benefit from work stoppages if they own other firms in substitute industries and gain market power for those other firms the incentives of the owners are examined with a model of cross ownership cartels and data from professional sports assuming that various professional sport events are substitutes owners may increase profits by eliminating competition even if they own the competition this study shows that the recent national hockey league nhl lockout caused a statistically significant increase in attendance for the national basketball association and junior hockey leagues given that many nhl owners own teams in these substitutable leagues this could be construed as anti competitive behaviour and may have prolonged the nhl lockout and helped nhl owners in collective bargaining given the public investment in sports facilities and market power in professional sports this analysis calls for cross ownership across professional sports to be questioned

pay and performance in major league baseball the case of the first family of free agents it is well established that a baseball player s salary is based on his performance experience star status bargaining power mobility and his team s ability to pay this paper focuses on veteran players who are on the brink of retirement and on the

bargaining in the transfer market theory and evidence this paper examines the transfer market for association football players as operated in the english football league using transfer data for the 1990 91 season after describing the purposes and procedures involved in the transfer system together with the motives of the participants we apply two person bargaining theory to analyse the determination of transfer fees the data and estimation procedures are explained and the results reported and interpreted our analysis suggests that the nash bargaining theory captures the salient features of the bargaining process in the footballer s transfer market

risk aversion and rent seeking redistributions free agency in the national football league the unique organization of the labor market in the national football league nfl provides an interesting case study of rent seeking behavior in particular the restrictions on player mobility the absence of free agency have received considerable attention in the literature 10 11 12 restrictions on free agency limit employment alternatives and redefine the player s opportunity set allowing rents which would be captured directly by the superior players in a free market environment to be competed for by other participants in professional football the nfl player s association nflpa and the nfl management council nflmc occupy strategic positions in the competition for these economic rents this paper develops a risk averse expected utility maximizing model to analyze rent seeking behavior in the nfl we focus on the incentives of individual players to support free agency we also consider the behavior of the nflmc and nflpa by analyzing the effects of the owner s recent decision to impose a restricted form of free agency and the vacillating position of the nflpa with respect to unconditional free agency to investigate player support of free agency we apply two variants of the median voter model the traditional model and a risk averse model recently developed by bishop formby and smith 2 in which expected utility is maximized we demonstrate that in general an increase in the median wage is neither necessary nor sufficient for median player support of free agency only in the case of risk neutrality is an increase in median wages sufficient for median voter support

racial discrimination in professional basketball evidence from nielsen ratings using data on nielsen ratings for locally televised nba basketball games we find strong evidence that viewership increases when there is greater participation by white players this finding controls for a wide variety of other factors that could systematically affect nielsen ratings and signifies the presence of customer discrimination in the market for nba players we also find that higher nielsen ratings allow nba teams to realize greater advertising revenues meaning that the marginal revenue product of white players exceeds that of comparable black players this factor explains much of the race based salary gap that exists in professional basketball

the determinants and welfare implications of us workers diverging location choices by skill 1980 2000 abstract from 1980 to 2000 the rise in the us college high school graduate wage gap coincided with increased geographic sorting as college graduates concentrated in high wage high rent cities this paper estimates a structural spatial equilibrium model to determine causes and welfare consequences of this increased skill sorting while local labor demand changes fundamentally caused the increased skill sorting it was further fueled by endogenous increases in amenities within higher skill cities changes in cities wages rents and endogenous amenities increased inequality between high school and college graduates by more than suggested by the increase in the college wage gap alone jel d31 i26 j24 j31 j61 r23

are firms with foreign ceos better citizens a study of the impact of ceo foreignness on corporate social performance this study examines whether firms corporate social performance csp varies when local firms have foreign ceos building on the social identity perspective we argue that because foreign ceos are perceived as outgroup or nonprototypical leaders by the local firms stakeholders local firms with foreign ceos need to achieve a higher level of csp than do local firms with local ceos to enhance their legitimacy and trustworthiness furthermore we propose that the predicted difference in csp between foreign and local ceo led firms will be larger a for more authentic and thus trust enhancing csr activities and b in those socio economic environments where the salience of ceo foreignness and thus the need to build trustworthiness with locals is more pronounced in a sample of 1001 local firms across 18 developed countries during the period between 2003 and 2015 our empirical results support most of our predictions

customer preferences attendance and the racial structure of professional basketball teams this paper examines the importance of customer based discrimiantion in professional basketball over the 1980 81 to 1985 86 seasons empirical rsesults offer strong support of the hypothesis that if fans prefer to see players of their own race teams will be influenced in their selection of players by the racial composition of their market area by the same token attendance is found to be positively related to the extent to which the racial composition of the team matches that of the corresponding market area

team roster turnover and attendance in major league baseball empirical support is shown for the propositionthat sports fans prefer the composition of their home team to remain the same from season to season controlling for price income population team quality league year the stadium effects the regression results indicate that for each percentage point increase in the turnover of the composition of the team attendance will fall by about 0 7 the implications of this heretofore ignored tendency are briefly discussed

variety and superstardom in popular music i introduction alfred marshall 1947 and irving fisher 1925 73 both believed that as average incomes increase the increase in the demand for quality goods and services will be greater than for those goods and services regarded as having lower quality in addition marshall pointed out that innovations in technology and mass production such as those taking place at the turn of the century would lower the per unit price of quality goods and ultimately allow the higher quality goods to capture a greater share of the market rosen 1981 1983 has termed this the superstar phenomenon marshall added a specific view that this situation had not occurred in the field of professional singers since at that time there were insufficient innovations for low cost mass production of sound rosen 1981 857 has suggested that subsequent innovations have since made the field of professional singers i e the recording industry a likely candidate for the superstar phenomenon in a recent paper hamlen 1991 provided some initial empirical evidence which indicates that the modern recording industry for popular music i e 1955 1987 fell short of the predicted marshall rosen superstar phenomenon in that study it was shown that while consumers of popular music recognized differences in quality as measured by an external objective measurement and there was an increase in total record earnings by singers with greater measured levels of ability the increase in these earnings was less than proportional to the increase in ability this would indicate that the marshall rosen concept of superstardom did not hold empirically during the period however there was no attempt in that paper to analyze why the superstar phenomenon failed to occur in a profession that has been viewed in the superstar literature as one of the most likely candidates since the knowledge of quality differences in performers is highly dependent on the transmission of information among different consumers some economists have tried to hypothesize a more precise market scenario to explain how performers with greater talent rise to stardom macdonald 1988 offered a model which he believes is relevant for musicians and singers it is based on a dynamic information accumulation process with multiple market levels singers begin in the entry level market where they compete mostly as unknowns here they share the revenues from lower income consumers who also have lower opportunity costs of time and therefore can afford to listen to many singers of relatively poor quality however in this entry level market some singers exhibit relatively high quality and receive above average success these higher quality singers are then given the opportunity to compete successfully in more select markets where the consumers have higher incomes and higher opportunity costs of time in each higher market level consumers are willing to pay a premium to listen to only the higher quality singers i e those filtered out from the lower market levels under reasonable assumptions macdonald s multi market processes can produce the superstar phenomenon described above adler 1985 pointed out a possible flaw in superstar models such as macdonald s the quality filter described above may be an imperfect filter with both type one errors some high quality singers do poorly and type two errors some lower quality singers do well adler believes that factors other than talent also determine the success and failure of singers these factors consist of those attributes which cannot be directly described as a measure of quality while some of these other factors are measurable and comparable e g musical style sex or race many may never be identified or measured e g charisma song delivery good looks etc the presence and importance of all of these other factors both measurable and nonmeasurable make up the demand for variety and tend to alter the simple relationship between quality ability and success

wages rents and amenities differences among workers and regions what explains persistent regional earnings differences this paper argues that regional differences in amenities can account for the wage differences in contrast cost of living variations do not account for wage differences but actually exacerbate them this conclusion results from a model in which variations in rents and wages are equalizing differences for amenity differences empirical results are consistent with the model

customer discrimination and affirmative action i introduction beginning with the work of becker 1957 economists have been concerned with the relationship between competitive market forces and the persistence of labor market discrimination 1 a major insight of becker and the literature that followed is that competition could tend to eliminate discriminatory pay differentials if competitive forces do eliminate discrimination then empirical findings of persistent discrimination are either a result of faulty testing or market imperfections economic analysis of the link between competition and discrimination depends on the origins of prejudice becker identified at least three possible sources employers co workers and consumers 2 in each of these instances the group against which prejudice is directed e g women or minorities which will be termed minorities in this paper may be able to escape discrimination first minorities can work for nondiscriminatory employers if there are any moreover stiglitz 1973 shows that with constant returns to scale such employers will take over markets from the discriminators eliminating any pay gap based on prejudice 3 second if there is co worker prejudice then minorities can work in segregated firms which under constant returns to scale may have a cost advantage over integrated or all majority firms again discrimination will be driven away 4 third minorities can theoretically escape customer discrimination by specializing in the production of goods for which there is no contact between producers and consumers a case discussed by cain 1986 while competitive forces may in some cases erode discriminatory wage differentials the rate of decline of race and sex wage differentials has evidently not been rapid enough in the eyes of policymakers u s anti discrimination policy has been guided by two major vehicles title vii of the 1964 civil rights act and the office of federal contract compliance programs ofccp 5 the equal employment opportunity commission eeoc was created to enforce title vii and is empowered to aid plaintiffs or bring suit itself against employers the commission monitors the employment practices of federal contractors not only are contractors barred from discrimination against protected groups these firms are also required to take affirmative action not to discriminate the purpose of this paper is twofold first it demonstrates that in a general equilibrium framework the case of customer discrimination is theoretically distinct from employer or co worker prejudice in particular while constant returns to scale and the existence of nondiscriminatory firms can eliminate the latter two forms of discrimination customer discrimination may persist even under such conditions the persistence of discriminatory wage differentials is shown to depend on consumer demand technology and the relative size of the minority labor force 6 second the general equilibrium framework is then used to evaluate the impact of government anti discrimination policy where customers are the source of discrimination it is shown that if the government requires equal pay and proportional representation for minorities then the resulting allocation of resources will under particular assumptions be the same as if customers did not discriminate i then contrast these theoretical results with the predicted general equilibrium impact of affirmative action when there is employer or co worker prejudice among previous general equilibrium models of affirmative action welch 1976 assumed no discrimination while freeman 1978 did not specify the source of discrimination it is shown here that the source of prejudice markedly affects one s conclusions about affirmative action further even in some cases where segregation has eliminated discriminatory wage differentials the introduction of affirmative action has allocative effects finally evidence from studies evaluating the impact of affirmative action is used to distinguish among the various equilibrium models

pre and within season attendance forecasting in major league baseball a random forest approach this study explores the forecasting of major league baseball game ticket sales and identifies important attendance predictors by means of random forests that are grown from classification and regre

racial discrimination among nba referees the nba provides an intriguing place to assess discrimination referees and players are involved in repeated interactions in a high pressure setting with referees making split second decisions that might allow implicit racial biases to become evident we find that more personal fouls are awarded against players when they are officiated by an opposite race officiating crew than when they are officiated by an own race refereeing crew these biases are sufficiently large so that they affect the outcome of an appreciable number of games our results do not distinguish whether the bias stems from the actions of white or black referees

are workers willing to pay to join a better team using data from the major league baseball free agent market this study is the first to show that the productivity expected of the team a worker will join produces a significant negative compensating wage differential the younger workers in the sample drive this result trading 25 of their wages to join teams with an expected productivity one standard deviation higher this investment can be recouped if a reasonable increase in human capital occurs these results are robust to contract length wage simultaneity and indicate that investment in human capital motivates the observed tradeoff suggesting a new pathway through which human capital accumulation can affect wages reliable measures of workers own past productivity and the productivity expected of a worker s future team provide key advantages to identifying these effects jel j31 j24 m54

how much equity does the government hold a central point in the recent debate about social security in the united states has been the extent to which the federal government should take significant positions in the equity market but as this paper shows the government already has a much more significant if implicit position in the u s equity market through its claim to future tax revenues using estimates of the sensitivity of federal tax revenues to stock market returns i calculate the implicit equity position of the federal government defined as the equity position that would be as sensitive to the stock market as the present value of federal revenues although standard errors are large point estimates indicate that the implicit federal equity position exceeds the size of the stock market itself a result that is consistent with the fact that revenues from all sources not just taxes on corporate source income are responsive to stock market returns this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

consumer discrimination and self employment self employment rates and incomes differ significantly by race we show that these differentials arise in markets with consumer discrimination and incomplete information about the price of the good and the race of the seller equilibrium income distributions have two properties mean black incomes are lower than mean white incomes and the returns to ability are lower for black than for white sellers able blacks therefore are less likely to self select into the self employment sector than able whites using the 1980 census data we find that observed racial differences in the self employment income distributions are consistent with the theoretical predictions

property rights and resource use evidence from mlb starting pitchers we conduct a unique test of the efficiency of property rights in major league baseball the rights to the services of players are resources that can be possessed by the clubs or by the players them

interracial workplace cooperation evidence from the nba using data from the national basketball association nba we examine whether patterns of workplace cooperation occur disproportionately among workers of the same race we find that holding constant the composition of teammates on the floor basketball players are no more likely to complete an assist to a player of the same race than a player of a different race our confidence interval allows us to reject even small amounts of same race bias in passing patterns we find some evidence of own race bias in situations where the outcome of a particular play is less important our findings suggest that high levels of interracial cooperation can occur in a setting where workers are operating in a highly visible setting with strong incentives to behave efficiently jel j15 j71 l23

the payoff to consistency in performance this study investigates whether firms are willing to pay higher wages to workers who demonstrate consistent performance than to those whose performance is more volatile a formal model reflects a production technology view assuming the law of diminishing marginal product this model suggests that a more consistent worker produces higher expected output and therefore receives a higher wage the test of the model uses data from the national basketball association the empirical data support the model players whose performances were more consistent than the performances of other players received higher wages on average jel d41 j31 m52 z20

competition format championship uncertainty and stadium attendance in european football a small league perspective to increase the number of regular season games small football leagues are often organized as quadruple round robin tournaments with teams playing each other four times theoretically however the more games played the less uncertain is the championship race reducing fan interest in the league this article uses data from austria and switzerland to study the relationship between competition format championship uncertainty and attendance demand empirically results suggest that a team still in contention to win the championship positively affects attendance while it is not the specificity of the competition format that per se contributes to less championship uncertainty

customer discrimination in professional basketball evidence from the trading card market this paper presents evidence on the existence of customer racial discrimination in professional basketball from recent prices for the trading cards of former players in the national basketball association data were collected on the 258 active roster players in the nba during the 1976 77 season 133 of whom had cards issued that year maximum likelihood estimation of a card price equation is carried out accounting both for the nonrandom selection of the players for whom cards exist and for left censoring of the dependent variable overall the empirical results suggest the absence of customer racial discrimination in the pricing of basketball trading cards however there is some evidence that the effect of career length on trading card prices is lower for whites than for blacks and that the card price premium for players who subsequently coached in the nba is lower for blacks than for whites

the existence and persistence of a winner s curse new evidence from the baseball field this study takes advantage of recent developments in the measurement and valuation of individual output in the baseball labor market to i reassess prior evidence that this market is afflicted by the winner s curse phenomenon and ii test whether bidders learn to avoid this curse over time though we find no evidence of negative average returns on player contracts for the earliest cohort of baseball free agents we conclude that teams in that era failed to efficiently discount their bids in accord with available information especially about risk what is more evidence from a larger sample of players signed in the late 1990s shows that teams have continued to overvalue inconsistent free agents and failed to limit their bids to conform to players lower values in small markets this is consistent with experimental evidence that finds bounded rational behavior when bidders are faced with complex valuation problems involving multiple elements

exit discrimination in the nba a duration analysis of career length exit discrimination is defined as the involuntary termination of employment due to racial characteristics holding productivity constant we test for exit discrimination in the national football league nfl using a panel study on career length our analysis focuses on six positional groups defensive backs defensive linemen linebackers running backs tight ends and wide receivers in our analysis in addition to race we include performance variables to determine their importance in determining career length using both parametric and semi parametric hazard models we find no evidence of exit discrimination in the nfl