Production Efficiency and Discriminatory Hiring Practices in the National Hockey League: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

This paper studies the production process in the National Hockey League (NHL) and attempts to identify the sources of production inefficiency, including potential inefficiencies associated with preferences for, or against French-Canadians. Employing the method of stochastic frontier estimation, it is shown that production inefficiencies are prevalent in the NHL and can, in part, be traced to differences in coaching ability, team ownership, local sports competition, and management experience. In addition, it is found that teams with unusually high (or low) numbers of French-Canadian players tended to be less efficient, implying that discriminating hiring practices are costly. Copyright Springer 2005