 Beyond Moneyball: Changing Compensation in MLBJoshua Congdon-Hohman and
Jonathan Lanning
No 1702, Working Papers from College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics Abstract: This study examines the changes in player compensation in Major League Baseball during the last three decades. Specifically, we examine the extent to which recently documented changes in players� compensation structure based on certain types of productivity fits in with the longer term trends in compensation, and identify the value of specific output activities in different time periods. We examine free agent contracts in three-year periods across three decades and find changes to which players� performance measures are significantly rewarded in free agency. We find evidence that the compensation strategies of baseball teams increased the rewards to �power� statistics like home runs and doubles in the 1990s when compared to a model that focused on successfully reaching base with a batted ball without a significant regard for the number of bases reached. Similarly, we confirm and expand upon the increased financial return to bases-on-balls in the late 2000s as found in previous research. Keywords: compensation; incentives; labor markets; baseball (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Journal of Sports Economics, Volume 19, Number 7, October 2018, Pages 1046-1061. Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hcx:wpaper:1702 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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