Using a sample of professional baseball players from 1871-2007, this paper aims at analyzing a longstanding empirical observation that married men earn significantly more than their single counterparts holding all else equal (the "marriage premium"). Baseball is a unique case study because it...

We find an inverted relation between a player's birthday and the likelihood of receiving the Ballon d'Or (awarded to the best football player in the world). We develop a multi-period skill formation model with selection into elite education. We show that those born late (underdogs) need to work...

This paper investigates the final bid prices for players during the first three seasons of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Although the IPL imposes a salary cap and other labor-market restrictions, it is anticipated that final bid prices reflect the aggregate value of player productivity...

Following the NBA's 2006 ‘one-and-done' rule, players have to be at least one year out of high school before being eligible for the annual draft. This study finds that, whereas an array of NBA player performance measures, often referred to as ‘advanced statistics,' are strongly significant...

We model a competitive labor market with heterogeneous firms of varying productivities, and consider two information-collection processes: searching for "good news" about applicants, and searching for "bad news." Under the former, firms seek positive signals to qualify applicants, and under the...

This paper examines sources of gender pay disparity and the factors that contribute to this pay gap. Many researchers question the role of discrimination and instead attribute the residual pay gap to gender differences in preferences. The main issue considered in this paper is whether gender...

The study of the employment relation has always held a somewhat ambiguous position within the field of economics. The nature of labour market adjustment processes and unique aspects of the employment relation have posed problems for standard economic theories and have limited the use of formal...

This paper studies how the labor market frictions of skilled workers affect corporate valuation. The analysis features immigrant workers’ mobility constraints imposed by the U.S. green card application process and exploits exogenous variations caused by imperfections in the current immigration...

Until passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), regulating the employment of non-citizens was held to be only a “peripheral concern” of the immigration statute. Beginning in 1987, United States employers were subject to sanctions for the hiring of undocumented...