STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR AND THE PERSISTENCE OF DISCRIMINATION IN PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL

This paper examines labor-market discrimination in major-league baseball using a game-theoretic model. We find that strategic interaction may have played a pivotal role in the history of discrimination in the major leagues. Our results offer insight into the collapse of the color barrier and the league's subsequent evolution. We also show that changes in institutional features such as draft procedures, parity, and the number of competing teams can influence discriminatory behavior in ways that would go undetected without formal game-theoretic analysis.