This article examines customer discrimination considering a unique data set from the most popular sports industry in India, that is, cricket. Relying on Playing XI vote in the Indian Premier League, we analyze whether supporters have different personal preferences toward players based on their location of origin and religion. In contrast to the often-heated rhetoric surrounding discrimination and previous literature, we overall do not find any discrimination in voting. We instead find a positive preference for popular foreign players. Our results further suggest that if we examine discrimination by controlling for proxy productivity characteristics, it may produce bias results.
AlrababahA.MarbleW.MousaS.SiegelA. (2019). Can exposure to celebrities reduce prejudice? The effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic behaviors and attitudes. IPL Working Paper Series (No. 19-04). https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/eq8ca/
2.
BanerjeeA.BertrandM.DattaS.MullainathanS. (2009). Labor market discrimination in Delhi: Evidence from a field experiment. Journal of Comparative Economics, 37(1), 14–27.
3.
BanerjeeB.KnightJ. B. (1985). Caste discrimination in the Indian urban labour market. Journal of Development Economics, 17(3), 277–307.
4.
BarR.ZussmanA. (2017). Customer discrimination: Evidence from Israel. Journal of Labor Economics, 35(4), 1031–1059.
5.
BeckerG. S. (1971). The economics of discrimination. University of Chicago Press.
6.
BertrandM.DufloE. (2017). Field experiments on discrimination. Handbook of Economic Field Experiments, 1, 309–393.
7.
BrownE.SpiroR.KeenanD. (1991). Wage and nonwage discrimination in professional basketball: Do fans affect it?American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 50(3), 333–345.
8.
BurdekinR. C. K.HossfeldR. T.SmithJ. K. (2005). Are NBA fans becoming indifferent to race? Evidence from the 1990s. Journal of Sports Economics, 6(2), 144–159.
9.
CombesP.-P.DecreuseB.LaouenanM.TrannoyA. (2016). Customer discrimination and employment outcomes: Theory and evidence from the French labor market. Journal of Labor Economics, 34(1), 107–160.
DepkenC. A.FordJ. M. (2006). Customer-based discrimination against Major League Baseball players: Additional evidence from All-star ballots. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 35(6), 1061–1077.
12.
DepkenC. A.RajasekharR. (2010). Open market valuation of player performance in cricket: Evidence from the Indian Premier League. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1593196
13.
HeckmanJ. J. (1998). Detecting discrimination. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(2), 101–116.
14.
HolzerH. J.IhlanfeldtK. R. (1998). Customer discrimination and employment outcomes for minority workers. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113(3), 835–867.
15.
KahnL. M. (2000). The sports business as a labor market laboratory. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(3), 75–94.
16.
KahnL. M.ShererP. D. (1988). Racial differences in professional basketball players’ compensation. Journal of Labor Economics, 6(1), 40–61.
17.
KanazawaM. T.FunkJ. P. (2001). Racial discrimination in professional basketball: Evidence from Nielsen ratings. Economic Inquiry, 39(4), 599–608.
18.
LeonardJ. S.LevineD. I.GiulianoL. (2010). Customer discrimination. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(3), 670–678.
19.
ModiR.D’SilvaR. (2016). Liminal spaces. Economic & Political Weekly, 51(41), 19.
20.
NardinelliC.SimonC. (1990). Customer racial discrimination in the market for memorabilia: The case of baseball. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 105(3), 575–595.
21.
RaoG. (2019). Familiarity does not breed contempt: Generosity, discrimination, and diversity in Delhi schools. American Economic Review, 109(3), 774–809.
22.
SiddiquiK. (2016). A critical study of ‘Hindu Nationalism’ in India. Journal of Business and Economic Policy, 3(2), 9–28.
TourangeauR.YanT. (2007). Sensitive questions in surveys. Psychological Bulletin, 133(5), 859.
25.
WatanabeN.YanG.SoebbingB. P. (2015). Major League Baseball and twitter usage: The economics of social media use. Journal of Sport Management, 29(6), 619–632.
