Discrimination in Hiring Versus Retention and Promotion: An Empirical Analysis of Within-Firm Treatment of Players in the NFL

Michael Conlin () and Patrick Emerson ()

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2006, vol. 22, issue 1, 115-136

Abstract: If the costs and benefits of discriminating at the hiring stage differ from those at the retention and promotion stages, as recent evidence suggests, the effect of an individual's race on a firm's hiring decision should differ from its effect on the firm's retention and promotion decisions. This paper presents the first direct empirical test of this proposition. Using data of players drafted into the National Football League (NFL), we show that after controlling for draft selection, position, team, draft year, collegiate division, and team wins the prior season, white players have a 0.13 lower probability of having an active contract and start 1.56 games less than nonwhite players. When compared with the average probability of a drafted player having an active contract, 0.48, and the average number of starts, 2.6 games, these results provide strong evidence that nonwhite players face hiring discrimination in the NFL but are treated more equitably in retention and promotion decisions. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewj005 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:22:y:2006:i:1:p:115-136

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization is currently edited by Andrea Prat

More articles in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().