"Latinos in the Major Leagues from 1920 to 1939: A Human Capital Approa" by Tom Cullen

Article Title

Latinos in the Major Leagues from 1920 to 1939: A Human Capital Approach

Authors

Tom Cullen, University of Northern Iowa

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Economists frequently study the determinants of baseball players’ wages. Researchers usually control for measures of productivity such as the player's batting average, home runs, and runs batted in, education, age, and experience. This study differs from standard studies in that it considers players’ country of origin in the 1920s and 1930s, years before Jackie Robinson’s debut. It uses information on player productivity from Baseball-Reference.com, player salary information from the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (graciously shared by its compiler), and information on college attendance provided by Who's Who in Baseball (held at the Joyce Sports Collection, Notre Dame University). It concludes that although there is documented evidence of racial discrimination against Latinos, the discrimination probably did not take the form of lower salaries.

Publication Date

Spring 2015

Journal Title

Major Themes in Economics

Volume

Issue

First Page

Last Page

Copyright

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Language

File Format

application/pdf

Recommended Citation

Cullen, Tom (2015) "Latinos in the Major Leagues from 1920 to 1939: A Human Capital Approach," Major Themes in Economics, 17, 1-15.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/mtie/vol17/iss1/3