The Determinants of Base Pay and the Role of Race in Major League Soccer: Evidence from the 2007 League Season

Barry Reilly and Robert Witt

No 1907, School of Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, University of Surrey

Abstract: This paper examines pay determination in the labor market of a professional team sport hitherto neglected by researchers in the U.S. Using data on 361 Major League Soccer (MLS) players for one recent league season, mean and median regression models are exploited to investigate salary determinants. In comport with the available empirical evidence on racial pay discrimination in other professional team sports in the U.S., this study finds no overall evidence of pay disadvantage for non-white players. However, there is tentative evidence that black players who are not U.S. citizens actually fare worse than some other groups in salary terms.

JEL-codes: J31 J44 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2007-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-spo
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sur:surrec:1907

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