Discrimination

Question 1

What is discrimination?

Answer 1

The unequal treatment of particular groups

Question 2

What are the broad two categories of pay discrimination?

Answer 2

Taste based and statistical

Question 3

What does taste-based discrimination comprise? What are the results?

Answer 3

Employer, co-worker and customer (consumer) discrimination.

Particular groups are paid less than comparable groups

Question 4

As well as pay discrimination, give 3 more types of discrimination in sport.

Answer 4

• Hiring and exit discrimination. Longer careers for particular groups?
• Hiring discrimination for head coaches?
• Biased treatment from referees?

Question 5

Why’s sports data good for looking at discrimination?

Answer 5

Because we know everyone’s productivity which would otherwise be tough to measure in ordinary occupations.

Question 6

What is Becker’s Theory?

Answer 6

Firms that practice taste-based discrimination will suffer financial losses and will be forced out of their industries in perfect competition.

Question 7

How does Becker’s theory extend to sports?

Answer 7

Teams that practice taste-based discrimination should have fewer wins than teams that do not.

Question 8

Talk about Goff &Tollison (2022).

Answer 8

NLB - innovation of having a black player (Jackie Robinson) was imitated by other teams and their performances improved.

Question 9

Talk about Berri & Simmons (2009)

Answer 9

• Evidence that black quarter backs are underpaid relative to white quarter backs
• Blacks also weren’t being compensated in the market for their ability to rush.

Question 10

Talk about Brian Volz (2017)

Answer 10

When controlling for many factors, black QBs are more likely to be benched which is detrimental to team performance.

Question 11

What is Johnson & Minuci about?

What do they use to find what?

Answer 11

-Looks at impact of race on salary in the NBA using free contract signings.

-Using weighted linear regression and the Oaxaca-blinder decomposition they find that blacks are paid 13.1% less

• They also use weighted quantile regression to find consumer discrimination.

Question 12

Talk about Johnson and Minuci’s use of weighted least squares.

Answer 12

They run standard regressions controlling for many factors to find log(salary).

They used 4 specifications which use different performance metrics (p,a,r,b,s vs VORP)

They find that black players are underpaid 11.6-13.1%

Question 13

In Johnson & Minuci, what was controlled for in WLS?

Answer 13

Population, coach, player characteristics, race, performance

And season, team and position fixed effects

Question 14

Why use the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition?

Answer 14

We can see how much of the difference in regression results can be explained.

Gap = E + U

Question 15

What did the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition find?

Answer 15

There’s a 20.5% gap in the mean average salary. 36.2 % of this gap is due to systematic differences in characteristics

63.9% in unexplained by the predictors and this is attributed to discrimination.

Overall, black players receive 13.1% less than non-blacks ceteris paribus.

Question 16

What is consumer discrimination?

How does Johnson and Minuci explain it?

Answer 16

A decrease in salary explained by consumer preferences.

Consumers have a preference to observe players similar to themselves.

Question 17

How do Johnson and Minuci test for consumer discrimination?

What other interesting result do we see?
What explains this?

Answer 17

They use weighted quantile regression which includes an interaction term (Black*WhitePop) to shows that racial wage gap increases with white population.

We also see that the racial wage gap is only significant for the upper portion of the salary distribution (75th quantile and up) (role and star players)

As black players become more visible, the higher the racial wage gap.

Question 18

What do we see when we look at minutes played?

Answer 18

Salaries increase with minutes played. But salaries for blacks increase at a slower rate as compared to non-blacks

Question 19

What weaknesses on this paper can we address?

Answer 19

MSA (metropolitan statistical area) as a measure.

VORP doesn’t capture everything

Question 20

GSW as MSA stat.

Answer 20

Used to be located in Oakland but had heavy SF support.

Oakland - 21% black

SF - 4% black

Question 21

Talk about discrimination in football in the 1960s.

Answer 21

Plenty of hooliganism and racism. Does it affect performances?

Question 22

Why is racial pay discrimination hard to analyse in European (other than Italy) football?

Answer 22

Salary data isn’t readily available.

Question 23

Given pay data isn’t readily available in English football, how did Szymanski (2000) analyse discrimination?

Answer 23

Did a test for market discrimination.

Runs a regression for team performance. If there’s no discrimination, the coefficient on the share of black players in a team should be insignificant

Question 24

In Szymanski (2000), what does it mean if there’s a positive and significant coefficient on share of black players in a team?

Answer 24

Team performance could be improved at no additional cost by hiring more blacks

Question 25

In Szymanski (2000), what does it mean if there’s a positive and significant coefficient on share of black players in a team?

Answer 25

Team performance could be improved at no additional cost by hiring more blacks

Question 26

What did the Scottish Journal of Political Economy find?

Answer 26

Match day attendances are independent of the share of black players.

Question 27

What did Deschamps and DeSouza (2021) look at?

Answer 27

Models GD between home and away teams based on differences in wage bills and share of black players (minutes played)

Question 28

What are the Deschamps and DeSouza results?

Answer 28

Pre-Bosman ruling: increasing share of EU black players increases goal difference

Post-Bisman: no effect

Question 29

How did the Bosman ruling partly eliminate wage discrimination?

Answer 29

Teams could hire out of contract players from anywhere in EU for no cost

No limits of “5 foreign players”

Stronger incentive to raise team performance now that broadcasting rights are higher

Wage discrimination still exists for non-EU black players