[Typetext] Discrimination When Everyone is the Same Race: The Case of the National Hockey League Daniel Adler December 15, 2008 ABSTRACT Discrimination in the labor market is a very troubling prospect. It is difficult to test because different groups often have disparate backgrounds, which could explain some of the differences in pay. The National Hockey League provides an interesting place to test theories of discrimination since talent and contribution are far easier to gauge than most jobs. This paper analyzes whether there is discrimination on the basis of nationality in the market for professional hockey players in the NHL. The tests whether teams with more players from Eastern or Western Europe perform better than their payroll alone would predict. The initial results show that players from Western Europe may be significantly undervalued. After testing variations to the model, the evidence for discrimination against Western European players disappears. This analysis suggests that NHL teams do not discriminate on the basis of nationality.
1. Introduction The National Hockey League has the geographic diversity of a United Nations meeting. With players born in 27 different countries and the vast majority of players hailing from outside the United States, the NHL provides a perfect opportunity to see whether players from other countries face discrimination in a North American labor market. Particularly, this analysis will consider whether Europeans are compensated differently than their American and Canadian counterparts. When people work in a country other than their own, they may face legitimate barriers because they do not speak the language or do not have the same knowledge as the locals. However, if they have the same skills and they are legally permitted to work, they should not face discrimination. In hockey, players from other countries do possess the necessary skills hockey talent to do the job as well as their American counterparts. This paper will explore whether there is discrimination against players from outside the United States and Canada. It will examine whether players from Western Europe and Eastern Europe are treated differently from their US and Canadian counterparts. One reason why there may be discrimination is because players from outside of the US and Canada may be perceived to be less popular with the fans. Although the former Toronto Maple Leafs owner, Harold Ballard, once commented, I don t care if a guy has a back with yellow spots all over him and hairy arms down to his knees. If he could help me win the Stanley Cup, I d sign the son of a bitch, 1 it is possible that some teams do discriminate against certain types of players. All teams care about winning, but teams must balance their desire to win with 1 QuotedinJones, Colin, Serge Nadeau, and William Walsh (1999): Ethnicity, Productivity and Salary: Player Compensation and Discrimination in the National Hockey League, Applied Economics, 31, 593. 2
the need to make money. Generally, the two goals are aligned because teams that successful on the ice draw more fans, have higher television ratings, and sell more merchandise. It is likely there are some teams that care less about the financial impact of their roster and will bring in the absolute best players to help their chances of winning. However, even if there are at least a few teams that focus on finances, then the market for players who are more popular with the fans will push the price of those players higher. If players from foreign countries are discriminated against because of their lack of popularity amongst the fans, then a shrewd team could employ more of those players and enjoy greater success on the ice. There are two possible sources of discrimination. In the seminal work on discrimination, Becker (1971) reasoned that some employers may have a personal bias against one group. This would be the case that team management is somehow opposed to foreign players. Considering most of the decision makers in NHL front-offices are either American or Canadian, it would not be wholly surprising for them to show a preference for players from their own country or continent. Becker also asserts that discrimination may be driven by the preferences of the customer. This would mean the fans are opposed to players from other parts of the world. In this situation, it would be a wise business move for teams to discriminate against players from foreign countries. If the foreign players were justly discriminated against, then teams may enjoy on-ice success, but could suffer in terms of profits and losses if they have players the fans are biased against. Stone and Warren (1999) did find some evidence of discrimination in the market for basketball cards. Since collectibles are traded by fans, not management, this points toward possible discrimination by the customer in basketball. This analysis will not be able to determine the root of discrimination, if there is any. Discrimination could be the result of xenophobic 3
tendencies of management or it could be a business savvy move on the part of management which understands the preferences of its fan base. This analysis will test to whether there is systematic discrimination against people from one region of the world. The marketability and xenophobia argument presented earlier makes it seem that there may be discrimination against players from outside North America. Previously, Szymanski (2000) found evidence that English Premier League soccer teams discriminate against black players and that those teams with greater percentages of black players win more, when controlling for payroll. This analysis will bring a similar methodology to hockey, substituting nationality for race. Other methods to determine discrimination look at individual salary as a function of player statistics, but this model approaches the problem from the team perspective. One legitimate problem with other models is that the players who appear to be discriminated against may be bad teammates and are rightfully underpaid since their contribution to the team is less than their statistics indicate. The model used in this analysis, which is similar to Szymanski s, will be particularly helpful in hockey since it is a game heavily reliant on team play (as opposed to baseball, which is essentially a series of individual matchups). The advantage to this method over systems previously used to look for discrimination in hockey is that considering team composition and ultimate success allows one to refute the argument that players who are discriminated against do not actually help their teams because they lack some type of intangible quality. It is likely that the role of discrimination will be lower in hockey than soccer since race is likely a greater dividing factor than nationality. Most fans seldom hear players speak, but they can always see the color of their skin. Alternatively, there is a chance that teams have a preference for European players or somehow overvalue their talent. 4
Some research on discrimination in hockey already exists. Lavoie, Grenier, and Coulombe (1987) demonstrated that French speaking Canadians were discriminated against compared to English speaking Canadians, but their hypothesis was later refuted by McClean and Veall (1992). Research from Longley (1995) showed that English speaking Canadian teams discriminate against French Canadians. Longley hypothesizes that this is due to historic tensions between the regions. However, when considering more recent data, this no longer appears to be the case (Krashinsky and Krashinsky, 1997). If there was discrimination against Francophile Canadians, but not English speaking Canadians, it is possible Europeans could be discriminated against similarly based on their language/region. Past studies (Lavoie, Grenier, and Coloumbe, 1987; Jones, Nadeau, and Walsh, 1999) consider Europe as one region with a universal discrimination coefficient. This analysis takes the novel approach of splitting European players into East and West, which should capture more information about whether either side faces discrimination. With a variety of rival professional leagues in Eastern Europe, players from that region may have more incentive to stay home and NHL teams may overpay for their services. Another reason the two parts of Europe may be different is that fans may view Eastern European players, being further from North America, as more foreign and less like themselves. With a database of the most recent seven seasons, this analysis should delve further into the question of discrimination than previous studies. It will attempt to see if Canadian teams somehow discriminate differently than American teams. This paper shall also test whether there have been substantial changes in the market for players from any specific region after the league suspended play for an entire season because of labor strife. The results show that there may be some discrimination against Western European players, but when the analysis tests a number of 5
simple variations, this result disappears. It appears that most teams foster a similar viewpoint to the Maple Leafs crude owner and discrimination is nonexistent. 2. Empirical Strategy To test if there is discrimination, which causes some players to be undervalued, it is important to consider the goals of a team. Owners of professional hockey teams likely strive for two types of success: monetary success and on-ice success. While some owners may keep the team as a hobby and focus mainly on winning, others likely focus on the fiscal side of ownership. One important assumption this analysis makes is that revenue is a function of on-ice success (Szymanski, 594). Holding other factors, such as economic conditions (E it ) and team likability (L it ), constant, teams will draw more revenue (R it ) when they are successful (W it ): R it = β 0 + β 1 W it + β 2 L it + β 3 E it + ε it (1) where ε it is the error term. Evidence also suggests that revenue increases when games are higher scoring and players fight more often (Paul, 2004). For this analysis, those factors will be included in the error term. There is no reason to think that players from any region either lead to more fighting or more scoring. If there is discrimination from consumers, team likability will decrease when the team has more players from regions which are not preferred. There is no question that if an owner could choose to have a winning or losing team with the same payroll and team likability, every owner would prefer his team to win. This is true regardless of whether the owner operates the team as a profit maximizing business or a costly hobby. Owners must also consider their costs to maximize profits. Costs are based on player and staff salaries as well as marketing/promotional budgets. Higher salaries can increase talent, which should lead to greater success, W it. Higher coaching salaries could also bring in better coaches, increasing success, W it. Marketing and promotional campaigns, which cost the team 6
money, could increase team likability and allow the team to draw greater revenue. If a team could maintain the same expenses (team payroll, coaching salaries, and staff budget) and somehow win more games, it would obviously be helpful for profit. The key component in team success (W it ) is team talent (T it ). Success is also dependent on a series of other factors (X it ) such as coaching quality, team unity, and team morale, all of which are very difficult to measure. W it = β 0 + β 1 T it + β 2 X it + ε it (2) This analysis will primarily concentrate on ways for a team to increase on-ice success through higher levels of talent since it has been determined that all teams would like to win more. If teams could increase their talent level without paying more money, it would help them win more and increase profits. One important caveat is that to increase revenue, the team would need to be sure that the new players did not decrease likability. For example, filling a team with ex-convicts could lead to a good win percentage, but fans would likely not support a team of felons. The hypothesis of this paper is that there exists discrimination in the labor market for players from different countries. Team talent is the combination of the levels of talent the team receives from each region. Over 99% of NHL players come from the United States, Canada, Western Europe, or Eastern Europe (including Russia). The following equation gives a team s talent level: T i = t ius + t ica + t iwe + t iee + t iother (3) where t ius, t ic, t iwe, t iee represent the amount of talent on a team from each region and t iother represents talent from other regions. It is impossible to actually break down a team s total talent by region. However, it is reasonable to use percentage of team s players from each region (PP REGION ) as a proxy for talent breakdown. This analysis also uses percentage of total minutes played by players from each region (PM REGION ) as another proxy for talent contribution from each region. Similar variables are also used to judge the contribution of goalie talent, using percentage of goalie games played by players from each region (PG REGION ). Teams with greater 7
percentages of their total minutes and goalie appearances coming from one region likely have a greater share of their total talent, T i, from that region. A player s salary (cost) is a function of the player s talent level, c(t), with better players being paid more money. If there is discrimination and players of equal talent are priced differently depending on where they are from (in addition to their talent level), the cost of talent will not be the same over all the regions examined thus, c(t ius ) c(t ica ) c(t iwe ) c(t iee ). To test whether this prediction is correct, this analysis will examine team success as a function of regional composition and control factors which may influence team success, most importantly payroll. If the effect of team composition is significant, this will be prove that talent is priced differently depending on the player s nationality. Controlling for payroll and other relevant variables, teams with greater portions of their talent coming from undervalued (or discriminated against) regions will have greater success. Expanding upon equation 2, the regression model will attempt to separate team talent (T i ) into the contribution of talent from each region (t ius, t ic, t iwe, t iee ; t iother is dropped): W it = β 0 + β 1 t itus + β 2 t itca + β 3 t itwe + β 4 t itee + β 5 X it + ε it (4) As stated earlier, talent contribution is impossible to measure, so this analysis uses the proxies PP REGION, PM REGION, and PG REGION to approximate the talent contribution from each region. In the first series of regressions, success will be measured in team points, which are calculated based on wins, losses, and ties. Point totals determine the standings and playoff seeding. In the second series of regressions, success will be considered in terms of a binary variable which says whether or not the team made the playoffs (one for making the playoffs, zero for not making the playoffs). This is useful because the difference between making the playoffs and missing the playoffs is quite important as playoff teams play more games and receive extra 8
revenue from those games. The models tested are variations of equation 4. In some regressions, PP REGION, PM REGION, and PG REGION are all used to approximate talent contribution by region; in other regressions PP REGION or a combination of PM REGION and PG REGION are used to approximate talent contribution by region. Naturally, there is a high correlation between PP REGION and PM REGION, but using them both increases the validity of the model. Regressions also include a variety of simple variations and robustness checks. Payroll is an important control and used in all regressions. Year dummy x payroll interactions are also used since the effect of spending money varies by year. In all regressions, year controls are used since the point system changed after the 2003-2004 season. A dummy for Canada is used since Canadian teams appear to be significantly different than American teams both in terms of success and also regional composition. Additionally, some regressions separately test Canadian and American teams to see if there if the effect of team composition varies by the country of the team. Overall, the regressions in this study take the form: W it = β 0 + β 1 PP itus + β 2 PP itca + β 3 PP itwe + β 4 PP itee + β 5 X it + ε it (5) where the matrix of controls, X it, the team inclusion of some or all of the team composition variables (PP REGION, PM REGION, and PG REGION ) varies, and the output variable, team success, W it is either the team s point total or a binary variable for making the playoffs. Lastly, as a check of robustness, team fixed effects are included in some regressions. However, since roster composition is highly correlated year-to-year and the data only covers seven seasons, this may artificially dampen the impact of roster composition. The final set of regressions groups all non-north American players together to see if there is perhaps some type of universal discrimination against all people from outside the US and 9
Canada. Since over 99% of the league is from the US, Canada, or Europe (including Russia), these results will essentially show if there is a systematic bias for or against all Europeans, regardless of whether they are from the West or East. 3. Data Professional sports provide an intriguing area for considering labor market issues. Unlike other labor markets where there are many metrics for judging company success quarterly earnings, company expansion, stock price the on-ice component of team success is easy to quantify. This analysis uses panel data from the 30 teams of the National Hockey League during the 2000-2001 season through the 2007-2008 season. Due to a lockout, there was no 2004-2005 season so the dataset includes seven full seasons. Team salary information is from USA Today s publicly available database. The database starts with the 2000-2001 season, which is convenient since that season was the last time the NHL expanded, adding two teams during the 2000-2001 season. During each of the seven seasons covered in this analysis, there were 30 teams. Six of the teams are Canadian and 24 are American. Team rosters, player birthplaces, player statistics, and team records are courtesy of the official website of the National Hockey League. Payroll Data and Lockout The USA Today database includes team and individual salary data for the last seven seasons. Before the 2004-2005 season was to begin, the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) signed after a 1994-1995 lockout expired and the owners could not come to an agreement with the NHL Players Association. As the two sides fought over terms of the new CBA, the entire 2004-2005 season was canceled. Most important to this analysis is that upon return of the NHL for the 2005-2006 season, there were multiple payroll and rule changes. 10
First and foremost, the new CBA instituted a maximum salary cap and salary floor for each team. Additionally, caps were placed on individual player salaries. Not only did average team salary decrease, but variation in salary diminished significantly since teams were mandated to spend within a relatively small range. Table I in the appendix shows yearly payroll averages. Since team salaries decreased dramatically after the introduction of the salary cap, this analysis includes interaction effects between year dummy variables and payroll. This adjustment should control for the inflation during most seasons and the deflation during the season immediately after the salary cap. Since the lockout year marked many important changes, in some regressions, the data is split at this point and tested separately to see if the market somehow changed after the lockout. Competition for players increased after the lockout as a number of leagues decided to challenge the NHL for the world s top players. Most notably, the Russian Superliga has tried to lure Eastern European stars back home. In addition to changes in the salary structure, before the 2005-2006 season, the league instituted a myriad of rule changes, some of which are very important to this analysis. To increase fan excitement, the league added the rule that games tied after a five-minute, four-onfour overtime would end in a shootout. Previously, games tied after a five-minute (standard fiveon-five) overtime would count as a tie in the standings. Starting with the 2005-2006 season, games tied after overtime go to a shootout in which a winner is always determined. Since the system for determining winners slightly changed after the lockout, the total number of wins for the league as a whole has been significantly different since the lockout (despite the fact that teams still play 82 games). NHL standings are determined by a system of points. For this analysis, points is the dependent variable. In both the old and new systems, teams receive two points for a win (in regulation, overtime or a shootout) and one point for an 11
overtime loss. In both systems, teams receive one point for an overtime loss. Shootout losses are one point in the new system. The key difference is that ties, which were common and counted as one point for each team under the old system, no longer exist. Due to the disappearance of ties, point totals before the lockout are not entirely comparable to those after the lockout. 2 Due to this important change, year fixed effects are included in regressions. A model using just payroll, payroll by year interactions, and year fixed effects explains 29% of the variation in team point totals. To maintain consistency between the pre-lockout period and the post-lockout period, a binary variable for making the playoffs is included as the dependent variable in some regressions. Under both systems, eight teams in each of the two conferences make the playoffs, so it is reasonable to say making the playoffs in either time period means the same thing. Additionally, since teams are most concerned with having a chance to win the championship and receiving the extra ticket revenue from playoff games, it may actually be more meaningful to model a team s chances at making the playoffs rather than try to predict their total points. Team Nationality Composition For each team, the number of players (skaters and goalies) from the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe was tallied. 3 Since each team plays a different 2 Average number of points in the four seasons before the lockout was 86.5 and in the three seasons since the lockout, the average was 91.3 per team. Average point totals are higher since any game that does not end in regulation will award three total points (two to the winner, one to the loser). Previously, games tied at the end of regulation could award three total points (if one team won in overtime) or two (if the game remained tied after overtime). 3 Eastern Europe is considered to be Belarus, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia. Western Europe is considered Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Great Britain. European countries not classified in either category did not have any NHL players during the period studied. 12
number of players through the season (due to roster fluctuations and injuries), the most comparable statistic is to consider the percentage of players from each region. To measure the contribution from each region beyond just the percentage of players, minutes played by skaters from each country/region were tallied. Each team plays a different number of total minutes depending on the number of overtime games they play. The statistic, percentage of team total minutes played by skaters from each region, should capture the relative importance of contribution from the specified region better than just looking at the composition of the team. Lastly, since minutes played by goalies are not comparable to regular skaters, an additional variable was created to measure the contribution of goalies by region. Rather than measuring minutes, goalie ice time is recorded in terms of games. Most teams play one goalie for the entire game. Much like minutes for skaters, the number of games played by goalies from each region was divided by their team s total number of goalie appearances for the year. This statistic estimates the percentage of goalie contribution from each region. Data Splits Canadian teams are significantly different from their US counterparts in terms of both success and nationality composition (see tables I and II). Not surprisingly, Canadian teams have more Canadian players and fewer US players. Additionally, Canadian teams have had more success than the American teams over this period. To control for whatever differences may impact the Canadian teams like more passionate fans, which cheer the teams to victory this analysis includes a dummy variable for team being from Canada. Since the Canadian teams may be different on a variety of levels players from one country are more comfortable playing there, 13
teams spend money differently based on the strength of Canadian currency in some regressions, Canadian teams are modeled separately. Additionally, as table III shows, the composition of the league has shifted slightly in the past seven years. After the lockout, some Eastern European players did not return and there has been an increase in American players. Since the overall distribution of talent by region may be different before and after the lockout, some regressions model the pre-lockout seasons separately from the post-lockout seasons. Interpretation of these models is simpler than including postlockout interactions with every necessary variable. Missing Controls Ideally, this analysis would include additional control factors beyond player payroll. Some teams spend more money on their coaching and training staffs. These expenditures may lead to on-ice success for the team. While the magnitude of the impact of a coach is debatable, there is no question that some coaches have a meaningful impact on the game. Most likely, these are the coaches who have been the most successful in the past and thus make the most money. In the National Basketball Association, there do appear to be some coaches who impact a team s record (Berri and Schmidt, 2008). Although salary figures for some coaching contracts are publicly available, at this time, there is no reliable figure for all the coaches in the past seven seasons. Team expenditures on training staffs are also unavailable. 4. Evidence As the methods section has determined, if there is systematic discrimination against one group of players, teams that employ more of those players will enjoy greater on-ice success. The first series of regressions explores whether teams with different nationality compositions have differing point totals when controlling for other important factors. All regressions include 14
payroll, year, and payroll x year fixed interactions since they are so critical to our model. The first regression (1) looks only at the impact of having a different composition of the team, but does not consider how much players from each region actually contribute to the team. In regression 1, Western European players appear to be undervalued. The coefficient of 108.58 on % Players Western European is very significant and essentially means that if a team went from no Western European players to being made of entirely Western Europeans, they could expect to win 54 more games. Certainly this result is extreme and the model is not valid for such large movements. A more reasonable estimate would be that a team could add one more Western European player (increasing the percentage by about 3%) and they would score roughly three points more, equating to about 1.5 wins over the course of a season. Winning 1.5 games more by adding one player would mean that the discrimination against Western Europeans was of a relatively high magnitude. Regression 2, which only considers contribution in terms of minutes and goalie appearances, has no significant results of interest. The significance of goalies from Eastern Europe is the result of a few good teams having Eastern European goalies. However, when the analysis combines the % Players from region, % Minutes played by players from region, and % Goalie Games by region variables in regression 3, again there is a significantly positive coefficient on having more players from Western Europe. Even when mitigated by the negative (but not significant) coefficient on % Minutes played by Western Europeans, the impact of Western Europeans appears to be positive for a team. One hypothesis I had was that Eastern European players would yield positive results because they were perceived as being somehow more foreign and less marketable than their Western European counterparts and discriminated against accordingly in the labor market. 15
However, since the result of the early regressions shows that Western European players are a better value, it seems that NHL teams may overpay Eastern Europeans to keep them away from their home league, but since Western Europeans lack the same opportunities, teams do not overpay for their services. So possibly teams are indeed somewhat xenophobic, but they are also competitive and do not like to miss out on players going to other leagues. Unfortunately, when testing variations of the equation to see if the impact is the same in both Canada and the US, the result that Western European players are undervalued disappears. Splitting the data could yield some very interesting results, including whether American or Canadian teams favor or discriminate against players from one region differently. However, it appears that despite their differences in composition teams seemingly favoring players from their own country the market does not appear out of balance. If the coefficient on Canadian players had been positive for US teams, it would have meant that US teams discriminate against Canadians. Another possibility is that Canadian teams could have had a positive coefficient on Canadian players, not because they discriminate against them, but because players perform better when playing in their home country. Regression 5 again shows the interesting result that teams with Eastern European goalies are better than those without European goalies. However, this is result is meaningless because there is a significant and positive coefficient on every goalie game variable. The small sample size of Canadian teams was thrown off by some unsuccessful teams goalies from outside Europe and North America. When splitting the data into two periods (regressions 6 and 7) to see if there was a difference between the pre-lockout and post-lockout period, again the interesting result disappears. Splitting the data also could have indicated whether there was one group that was 16
valued differently before or after the strike. Since the number of Eastern European players decreased in the years after the lockout, it seemed believable that Eastern European players could have been overvalued after the lockout because teams would overpay them to stay. This result would also support the rationalization for Western Europeans being underpaid relative to other groups. However, as regressions 6 and 7 show, this effect of shifting markets for players before and after the strike is not significant. The failure of the result found in regressions 1 and 2 to withstand any of the variations in subsequent regressions dampens the validity of the theory that Western European players are actually discriminated against. A second series of regressions (table V) considers success as a binary variable, whether or not the team made the playoffs, and obtains a very similar set of results as found in previous regressions. In this series of regressions (9, 11, and 13), the coefficient on % Players from Western Europe is again positive, supporting the theory that there is indeed discrimination against Western Europeans. However, none of these results are significant. Since making the postseason is highly correlated with team points, it is not surprising that the coefficients in this set of regressions tell a similar story to the previous regressions. Lastly, as a test of whether there is discrimination against people from outside North America in general, the same tests are run, but only measuring the impact of a team having Non- North American players and American players (Canadian players are dropped due to perfect multicollinearity). In all regressions except 15, which includes team fixed effects, the result seems to support significant discrimination against Non-North American players. However, when the data was further tested for variations (performing similar Canadian/American and prelockout/post-lockout data splits), the significance of the discrimination against Non-North Americans disappears. 17
5. Conclusion This analysis considered whether NHL teams discriminate against players from one specific region and it appears unlikely that they do. So far, this paper has only considered one type of team success winning on the ice. As stated early in the paper, teams also care about their profits. An interesting area for future research would be to model team profits based on the nationality composition of the team. Since team financial data is private, an analysis could examine the effect of nationality composition on team attendance. Attendance is an important factor in team revenue. There are many important factors that influence attendance (most importantly, the team s on-ice success), but there is a chance that fans will be more likely to support players from their own country. This would be a case of consumer discrimination. Since this study of the market does not show much evidence of any discrimination, it seems unlikely that this would be the case. However, research on the National Basketball Association by Kahn and Sherer (1988) suggests that replacing one black player with a white player of the same talent would increase home attendance by 8,000 to 13,000 fans per season. However, since hockey is so much more homogenous, a result of such magnitude is unlikely. Another possibility for future research is to consider the annual entry draft. Each offseason, teams select the top amateur players. The draft could be studied in itself if players from one region are consistently outperforming their draft slot, there would be evidence that teams discriminate. Also, the draft could be used as an additional control in a model similar to the one used in this paper. Since a high draft pick usually improves a team without adding significantly to their payroll (rookies are paid far less than veterans), a control that measures how highly a team selected in the draft would possibly improve the model. Since players from the 18
NHL draft usually play in the minor leagues for a number of years, this effect would have to be lagged. The NHL labor market does not appear to discriminate against players from any region. While fans may discriminate against certain nationalities or racial groups in their personal lives, it appears that they generally value their team winning above all else; or if they do have a bias, team management has a bias in the opposite direction and the two biases offset. It seems possible that sports of all types could make people less racist or xenophobic by making them feel a special connection to people who they may have previously harbored negative feelings toward. Since hockey is so overwhelmingly white, this effect may not be that important, but in other sports, particularly basketball and football, there is a chance that the sport is actually helping our society become more tolerant and equal. References Becker, Gary S. (1971): The Economics of Discrimination, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berri, David and Martin Schmidt (2008): Impact of Coaching in the NBA, Forthcoming (unpublished). Jones, J.C.H. and William D. Walsh (1988): Salary Determination in the National Hockey League: The Effects of Skills, Franchise Characteristics, and Discrimination, Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 41(4), 592-604. Kahn, Lawrence M. and Peter D. Sherer (1988): Racial Difference in Professional Basketball Players Compensation, Journal of Labor Economics, 6(1), 83-94. Krashinsky, Michael and Harry A. Krashinsky (1997): Do English Canadian Hockey Teams Discriminate Against French Canadian Players?, Canadian Public Policy, 23(2), 212-216. Lavoie, Marc, Gilles Grenier and Serge Coulombe (1992): Performance Differentials in the National Hockey League: Discrimination Versus Style-of-Play Thesis, Canadian Public Policy, 18(4), 461-469. 19
Longley, Neil (1995): Salary Discrimination in the National Hockey League: The Effects of Team Location, Canadian Public Policy, 21(4), 413-422. McLean, Robert and Michael Veall (1992): Performance and Salary Differentials in the National Hockey League, Canadian Public Policy, 18(4), 470-475. Paul, Rodney (2004): Variation in NHL Attendance: The Impact of Violence, Scoring, and Regional Rivalries, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 62(2), 345-364. Stone, Eric and Ronald Warren (1999): Customer Discrimination in Professional Basketball: Evidence from the Trading-Card Market, Applied Economics, 31(6), 679-685. Szymanski, Stefan (2000): A Market Test for Discrimination in the English Professional Soccer Leagues, The Journal of Political Economy, 108(3), 590-603. 20
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