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Measuring Employer‐Based Discrimination Versus Customer‐Based Discrimination: The Case of French Canadians in the National Hockey League
Author(s) -
Longley Neil
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/1536-7150.00217
Subject(s) - league , ice hockey , demographic economics , advertising , business , economics , physical medicine and rehabilitation , medicine , physics , astronomy
This paper examines alternative hypotheses as to why French Canadians are underrepresented on National Hockey League teams based in English Canada relative to their representation on teams based in the United States. Using panel data, the paper accounts for the idiosyncratic behavior of specific teams by using a fixed‐effects model. With these fixed‐effects accounted for, the paper tests the degree to which the representation of French Canadians on a team is related to that team's location—either in English Canada or the United States—versus the degree to which the representation is related to the ethnic origin of that team's coach and general manager. It finds the ethnic origin variables to be unable to explain the representational patterns, leaving the team location variable as the only significant explanatory variable. These statistical findings thus support a “customer discrimination” explanation of the underrepresentation, as opposed to an “employer discrimination” explanation. Identifying this source of any potential discrimination is important, since different sources will have different implications for the prospects of reducing such discrimination.