Moral Hazard and the Effects of the Designated Hitter Rule Revisited

Brian L Goff, William Shughart and Robert Tollison

Economic Inquiry, 1998, vol. 36, issue 4, 688-92

Abstract: New evidence seems to cast doubt on the hypothesis that the American League's adoption of the designated hitter rule in 1973 created a moral hazard problem for pitchers. In particular, the substitution of hard-hitting designated hitters for weak-hitting pitchers in the American League supposedly explains the lion's share of interleague differences in hit batsmen. However, theoretical and empirical questions about the explanatory power of this alternative hypothesis leads the authors to the conclusion that moral hazard remains the most plausible reason why more American League than National League batters have been hit by pitches in twenty-two of the past twenty-five seasons. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1998
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