Date of Award
2018
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Economics
First Advisor
Monica Das
Abstract
This undergraduate economics thesis is meant to find statistically significant evidence for shirking behavior in Major League Baseball (MLB). Theory suggests that players shirk on effort when they have recently signed a long-term lucrative contract, since there is little incentive to compete when money is guaranteed to the player regardless of current performance. It is particularly important to understand the MLB labor market, since the firms giving out contracts not only have a copious amount of production information regarding their employees, but this data is widely available to the general public. This study will make use of modern sabermetric statistics in order to further open up the conversation regarding shirking with advanced statistics. It will also seek to control for other motivational forces at play, such as intrinsic motivation of the player based on their own self-confidence, as well as extrinsic motivation regarding the performance of the time in terms of win-loss record. Such motivational factors had not yet been discussed within the shirking conversation.
Recommended Citation
Tizard, Henry, "Shirking and Remaining Years on Players’ Contracts in Major League Baseball" (2018). Economics Student Theses and Capstone Projects. 75.
https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/econ_studt_schol/75