Abstract

Previous research on racial wage discrimination has shown that biases against non-Whites in Major League Baseball have disappeared in the last two decades. This paper follows with the concept of testing for salary discrimination, but does so by using models testing whether discrimination against Blacks and Hispanics occurs within each of the three different salary-determination stages in the market structure of baseball. The three stages include rookies, those eligible for salary arbitration and those eligible for free agency. Rookies are players with service time of three years or less and are subject to the reserve clause. Players eligible for arbitration have service time of more than three years, but less than six years and are able to go before an arbitrator to present a case for what their salary should be for the following season(s). Free agents are those who have more than six years of service time and are able to seek out contracts from any team in the league. Regression results follow current studies which suggest racial discrimination has disappeared in MLB by controlling for experience, race, performance and inflation. However, Black hitters did show some evidence of discrimination at the arbitration level. This unexpected conclusion can be due to a variety of reasons which will be explained in the body of this paper.

Department

Business Economics

Publication Date

2008

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2008 Daniel J. Skulina