Salary Distribution and Team Outcome: The Comparison of MLB and KBO

Abstract

The effect of salary distribution on output productivity within the workplace has long been a topic of interest in labor economics. The salary compression hypothesis emphasizes cohesiveness among workers. However, tournament theory suggests that salary inequality may lead to diminished incentive to work, thus reducing average productivity. Cooperation among players is important for sports teams but a superstar is also an important factor in obtaining great outcomes in the sports industry. This paper specifies empirical models of the production function with exogenous efficiency factors for a baseball team using stochastic frontier model. This study also addresses the different salary distribution effects with respect to workforce characteristics by comparing two different baseball leagues, Major League Baseball with the Korean Baseball League. This paper concludes that tournament salary hypothesis is supported in MLB but salary distribution seems less important in the KBO.

薪酬分配与团队绩效:MLB与KBO的比较

工资分配对工作场所产出生产率的影响一直是劳动经济学关注的话题。工资压缩假说强调工人之间的凝聚力。然而, 竞赛理论表明, 工资不平等可能导致工作积极性降低, 从而降低平均生产率。运动员之间的合作对运动队来说是很重要的, 但是巨星也是体育产业取得好成绩的重要因素。摘要利用随机前沿模型, 建立了具有外生效率因子的棒球队生产函数的经验模型。本研究亦通过比较美国职棒大联盟与韩国职棒联盟两种不同的棒球联盟, 探讨不同薪资分配对员工特质的影响。本文的结论是, 职业棒球大联盟支持锦标赛薪酬假设, 但薪酬分配在KBO中似乎不那么重要。

Keywords:

• Salary distribution
• salary inequality
• stochastic frontier model
• efficiency
• baseball league

关键词：:

• 工资分配
• 工资不平等
• 随机前沿模型
• 效率
• 棒球联赛

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hayley Jang

Hayley Jang (Ph.D., Sogang University, Korea) is a researcher of Seoul National University Institute of Sport Science at Seoul National University (SNU) in Korea. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of sports economics. Specifically, her published works focus on demand analysis and labor market analysis in a professional sports league. She has published in journals such as Journal of Sports Economics, Applied Economics, Economic Inquiry etc.