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Do white NBA players suffer from reverse discrimination?

Author

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  • Olugbenga Ajilore

    (University of Toledo)

Abstract

The National Basketball Association (NBA) has been fertile ground for the study of discrimination due to demographic and cultural shifts in not only the teams but also the fan populace. The early research found evidence of black-white wage differentials and customer discrimination (Kahn and Sherer, 1988). However, this effect has gone away as customers have become more accustomed to African-Americans in the NBA. Recent research has now shown that the pendulum has swung in the other direction and find the existence of reverse discrimination (Groothuis and Hill, 2013; Yang and Lin, 2010). In this paper, I test whether there exist reverse discrimination with White athletes in the NBA. Following Altonji and Pierret (2001), I use a statistical discrimination with employer learning framework to estimate the model. Unlike previous work, I incorporate advanced basketball metrics like Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and Win Shares (WS) to measure player productivity. The results find no evidence of reverse discrimination occurring.

Suggested Citation

  • Olugbenga Ajilore, 2014. "Do white NBA players suffer from reverse discrimination?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 34(1), pages 558-566.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-14-00019
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    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2014/Volume34/EB-14-V34-I1-P53.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Joseph G. Altonji & Charles R. Pierret, 2001. "Employer Learning and Statistical Discrimination," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 313-350.
    2. P. Wilner Jeanty, 2010. "NEARSTAT: Stata module to calculate distance-based variables and export distance matrix to text file," Statistical Software Components S457110, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 07 Feb 2012.
    3. Peter A. Groothuis & James Richard Hill, 2013. "Pay Discrimination, Exit Discrimination or Both? Another Look at an Old Issue Using NBA Data," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(2), pages 171-185, April.
    4. McCormick, Robert E. & Tollison, Robert D., 2001. "Why do black basketball players work more for less money?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 201-219, February.
    5. Kahn, Lawrence M., 2009. "The Economics of Discrimination: Evidence from Basketball," IZA Discussion Papers 3987, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Kanazawa, Mark T & Funk, Jonas P, 2001. "Racial Discrimination in Professional Basketball: Evidence from Nielsen Ratings," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(4), pages 599-608, October.
    7. Eric Stone & Ronald Warren, 1999. "Customer discrimination in professional basketball: evidence from the trading-card market," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(6), pages 679-685.
    8. Chih-Hai Yang & Hsuan-Yu Lin, 2012. "Is There Salary Discrimination by Nationality in the NBA?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 13(1), pages 53-75, February.
    9. David J. Berri, 1999. "Who is 'most valuable'? Measuring the player's production of wins in the National Basketball Association," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(8), pages 411-427.
    10. Barton Hughes Hamilton, 1997. "Racial discrimination and professional basketball salaries in the 1990s," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 287-296.
    11. Richard C. K. Burdekin & Richard T. Hossfeld & Janet Kiholm Smith, 2005. "Are NBA Fans Becoming Indifferent to Race? Evidence From the 1990s," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 6(2), pages 144-159, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Igan, Deniz & Pinheiro, Marcelo & Smith, John, 2015. "A study of a market anomaly: “White Men Can’t Jump”, but would you bet on it?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 13-25.
    2. Johnny Ducking & Peter A. Groothuis & James Richard Hill, 2017. "Compensation Discrimination: an Analysis of Linebackers, Defensive Linemen, and Defensive Backs in the National Football League," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 251-260, December.
    3. Candon Johnson & Eduardo Minuci, 2020. "Wage discrimination in the NBA: Evidence using free agent signings," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(2), pages 517-539, October.
    4. Christopher Jepsen, 2023. "Determinants of Career Exits and Career Breaks in Women's Professional Basketball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(8), pages 1055-1075, December.
    5. Hisahiro Naito & Yu Takagi, 2016. "Does Increasing Salary Discrimination in the NBA Reflect Disparity of Fans' Purchasing Power?," Tsukuba Economics Working Papers 2016-002, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    NBA; Statistical Discrimination; Race; Advanced Statistics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J7 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

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