Compensation Discrimination for Defensive Players

Abstract

Keefer’s recent article in the Journal of Sports Economics, “Compensation discrimination for defensive players: applying quantile regression to the National Football League market for linebackers,” finds wage discrimination in the National Football League market for linebackers. Following Keefer, we examine both ordinary least squares and quantile analysis, as well as Oaxaca and quantile treatment effects decompositions though we explore the market not only for linebackers but also for offensive linemen and limit our study to rookie players. We would expect to find stronger evidence of discrimination, as rookies are captured sellers. However, we find no pattern of discrimination against Blacks.