Download Exit Discrimination in the NBA: A Study on Career Length and Race and more Study notes Statistics in PDF only on Docsity!
Groothuis, Peter A., Hill, J. Richard. (2004) Exit Discrimination in the NBA: A Duration Analysis of Career Length, Economic Inquiry , Vol. 42(2):341-349 (April 2004). Published by Wiley-Blackwell (ISSN: 0095-2583).
Exit Discrimination in the NBA: A Duration Analysis of
Career Length
Peter A. Groothuis, Richard J. Hill
ABSTRACT
Using a panel study of annual NBA data (1989-99), evidence of exit discrimination on career length in the NBA is not found. This result is inconsistent with results from data in the 1980s but is consistent with more recent findings that have measured wage discrimination in sports in the 1990s. In a semiparametric duration analysis, it is found that performance variables are important in determining career length. These results suggest that team owners in the pursuit of championships keep talented players regardless of race. This is an affirmation of Becker's theoretical implications of market competition on discrimination.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the National Basketball Association (NBA), as in most professional sports leagues, player turnover is high from season to season due to declining skills as players age. In our analysis, we ask: Are there any factors that determine the duration of players with any consistency? Is the position in which a player was selected in the draft a significant indicator of duration`? Is there any exit discrimination in the career duration where black players have shorter careers than white players?
We examine the determinants of player duration using data covering the 1989-99 period. The data include individual player performance statistics on a season-to-season basis as well as biographical player data on height, weight, race, and draft number. Our model differs from the only previous study on duration in the NBA in that our estimation technique allows for the use of a mixed stock and flow sample. Our time period is also longer than the previous study.
Literature Review
Sports economics has provided a rich field of study for labor economists to explore issues of discrimination. Professional baseball has attracted much of the attention of researchers. Scully (1974) found evidence of barriers to entry for black athletes in professional baseball using data from 1960-71 and evidence of pay discrimination using data from the late 1960s. Hill and Spellman (1984) found no evidence of pay discrimination or barriers to entry using data from the 1976--77 period. Subsequent studies with later data confirmed the lack of discrimination in baseball. Cymrot (1985) suggested that free agency was responsible for this turn of events; according to Kahn (1991, 402) the reasons for the reversal of outcomes are unclear.
Kahn and Sherer (1988) were the first to offer credible evidence of salary discrimination against African American professional basketball players. Despite 75% of the players in the league being black, data from regressions using 1985-86 salaries suggested a 20% shortfall in compensation for African American players, ceteris paribus. The results of other researchers using data from the same time period confirmed the conclusions. The source of the discrimination was found to be fans by Kahn and Sherer (1988, 56-57), Burdekin and Idson (1991), and Brown et al. (1991, 337). Again, however, just as in the case for baseball, studies by Hamilton (1997), Dey (1997), and Gius and Johnson (1998) with newer salary data failed to find evidence of salary discrimination in the NBA. Despite these findings, Kanazawa and Funk (2001) still found the existence of customer discrimination in the cable television Nielsen ratings during the 1996--97 season.
In addition to salary discrimination, labor economists have focused on both entry and exit discrimination. For instance, Kahn and Sherer (1988, 53-55) found no evidence of hiring discrimination in the NBA, but Brown et al. (1991, 339-43) found only weak evidence that black players had to outperform whites for entry into the league. In addition, Johnson and Marple (1973) using data from 1970 and Hoang and Rascher (1999, 78) using data from the 1980s, both find evidence that white players have a lower probability of being cut from the league. Hoang and Rascher (1999, 87-88) find that the effect of "exit discrimination" on career earnings in the NBA is larger than the effects of the previously documented wage discrimination.
II. THE MODEL
Our data include all individuals who participated in the NBA from 1989 through 1999 for an 11- year panel consisting of 1113 players. To capture the overall length of players' NBA careers our data consists of both stock and flow samples (see Figure 1). A stock sample consists of all ongoing careers at the start of the panel in 1989. These left-censored data are easily included because we know how many years each player had played in the NBA prior to 1989. Our stock sample consists of 295 players who had an average tenure of 6.01 years as they entered the 1989 season. Including a stock sample captures information on players whose careers are longer than the panel data set. For instance, one player during the 1990s had a career length of 21 years. Using only stock data, however, would underrepresent short-career players, so we also include flow data.
A flow sample includes all careers that start between 1989 and 1999. This sample captures many short careers in the NBA. For instance, during the 1990s 134 players had one-year careers. Including only flow data, however, would allow for no careers longer than 11 years, which is the length of our panel. As with most panels, our data is also rightcensored, where many careers were ongoing when our sample ended in 1999. Our rightcensored data include both stock and flow observations. To estimate a duration model of stock and flow data, we use a technique developed by Berger and Black (1999).
The variables in our data include both season-variant and season-invariant data. We report the means in Table 1. Our seasoninvariant data include the player's height, weight, race, and draft number. We find that the average height in the NBA is six feet, seven inches; average weight is 221 pounds; and 21% of the players are white. Our seasonvariant data are performance data that include games played per season as well as assists, rebounds, steals, turnovers, blocked shots, and points all calculate per minute played over the season. We report the means by the race of the player. We find that white players are on average 2 inches taller and 14 pounds heavier. White players also on average play five fewer games per season than black players. The average career length as measured by all nonright-censored data is 6 years for whites and 5.5 years for blacks. To determine if exit discrimination exits in the NBA, we analyze the data using both nonparametric and semiparametric techniques.
Nonparametric Estimates of Career Duration
To help understand career duration in the NBA, we calculate yearly hazard functions as
III. IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESULTS IN A GENERAL CONTEXT
Hoang and Rascher (1999) suggested that the effect on career earnings of exit discrimination was over twice as large as the effect of pay discrimination in the 1980s. The apparent disappearance of pay discrimination from the NBA in the 1990s would not mean an end to unequal career earnings if exit discrimination persisted. Our results indicate that exit discrimination no longer exists in the NBA.
The importance of these results extends beyond the courts of the NBA. Kahn (2000) discussed the use of research in the area of professional sports as a laboratory for testing general labor market propositions. Various laws in this country have helped moderate the level of racial pay
REFERENCES
Becker, G. The Economics of Discrimination, -Ind ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
Berger, M. C.. and D. A. Black. "The Duration of Medicaid Spells: An Analysis Using Flow and Stock Samples." Review of Economics and Statistics, 80(4), 1999, 667-74.
Berger, M. C., D. A. Black, and F. Scott. "The Myth of Job Lock." University of Kentucky Working Paper, 2001.
Bolla, G. A. "Accelerated Useful Life Testing and Field Correction Methods." Visteon Corporation Paper, Society of Automotive Engineers, 2002.
Bratsberg, B., and D. Terrell. "Experience, Tenure, and Wage Growth of Young Black and White Men." Journal of Human Resources, 33(3), 1998, 658-82.
Brown, E., R. Spiro, and D. Keenan, "Wage and NonWage Discrimination in Professional Basketball: Do Fans Affect It?" American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 50, 1991, 333-
Burdekin, R. C. K., and T. L. Idson. "Customer Preferences, Attendance and the Racial Structure of Professional Basketball Teams." Applied Economics, 23, 1991, 179-86.
Cox, D. R. "Regression Models with Life Tables." Journal of Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 34, 1972, 187-220.
Cymrot, D. J. "Does Competition Lessen Discrimination? Some Evidence." Journal of Human Resources, 20(4), 1985,605-12.
Dey, M. S. "Racial Differences in National Basketball Association Players' Salaries: A New Look." American Economist, 41(2), 1997, 84-90.
Gius, M., and D. Johnson. "An Empirical Investigation of Wage Discrimination in Professional Basketball." Applied Economics Letters, 5, 1998, 703--5.
Hamilton, B. H. "Racial Discrimination and Professional Basketball Salaries in the 1990's." Applied Economics, 29, 1997, 287-96.
Hill, J. R., and W. Spellman. "Pay Discrimination in Baseball: Data from the Seventies." Industrial Relations, 23(1), 1984, 103-12.
Hoang, H., and D. Rascher. "The N BA, Exit Discrimination, and Career Earnings." Industrial Relations, 38(1), 1999, 69-91.
Johnson, N. R., and D. P. Marple. "Racial Discrimination in Professional Basketball: An Empirical Test." Sociological Focus, 6(4), 1973, 6-18.
Kahn, L. M. "Discrimination in Professional Sports: A Survey of the Literature." Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 44(3), 1991, 395-418. -. "The Sports Business as a Labor Market Laboratory." Journal of Economic PersPectives, 14(3), 2000, 75-94.
Kahn, L. M., and P. D. Sherer. "Racial Differences in Professional Basketball Players Compensation." Journal of Labor Economics, 6( ), 1988, 40-61.
Kanazawa, M. T., and J. P. Funk. "Racial Discrimination in Professional Basketball: Evidence from the Nielsen Ratings." Economic Inquiry, 39(4), 2001, 599-608.
Scully, G. W. "Discrimination: The Case of Baseball,' Government and the Sports Business, edited by Roger G. Noll. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1974, 221-74.
Sexton, E. A., and R. Neil Olsen. "The Returns to On-theJob Training: Are They the Same for Blacks and Whites?" Southern Economic Journal, 61(2). 1994, 328-42.
Smith, J. P., and F. R. Welch. "Black Economic Progress after Myrdal." Journal of Economic Literature, 27(2), 1989, 519-64.
