Productivity, Wages and Marriage: The Case of Major League Baseball

Francesca Cornaglia and Naomi Feldman

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: The effect of marriage on productivity and, consequently, wages has been long debated in economics. A primary explanation for the impact of marriage on wages has been through its impact on productivity, however, there has been no direct evidence for this. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by directly measuring the impact of marriage on productivity using a sample of professional baseball players from 1871 - 2007. Our results show that only lower ability men see an increase in productivity, though this result is sensitive to the empirical specification and weakly significant. In addition, despite the lack of any effect on productivity, high ability married players earn roughly 16 - 20 percent more than their single counterparts. We discuss possible reasons why employers may favor married men.

Keywords: Productivity; wage gap; marriage; and baseball (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J44 J70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Productivity, wages and marriage: the case of Major League Baseball (2011)
Working Paper: Productivity, Wages, and Marriage: The Case of Major League Baseball (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1081

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