Has Salary Discrimination Really Disappeared From Major League Baseball?

Abstract

Analysis of a detailed data set for the 2000-2001 period shows no evidence of overall racial or ethnic salary discrimination for baseball players. Given prior research, that finding is not unusual. However, when the data set is divided into low, middle, and high salary ranges, a RESST test shows that minorities in the lowest salary group receive significantly lower returns to their skills than do whites. A decomposition of the wage differences for the lowest salary group shows that as much as 86.3% of the black/white and 91.5% of the Hispanic/white salary gap may be due to discrimination.