Editor's introduction

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 2003

This April issue contains a collection of papers with a decidedly quantitative focus that attempt to measure unusual market phenomena. Each essay offers quantitative assessments of what I find to be interesting and unusual market phenomena. Our referees have declared these papers worthy of publication. I have grouped them in this issue so as to encourage further discussion about the actual market mechanisms at work that produce such statistical results. If further discussion is needed, then I encourage our readers to prepare comments and send them on to the editor of this journal. The AJES always has space for a solid discussion of the mechanisms that help explain market or social phenomena.

Consider Professor Stephanie O. Crofton's analysis of college tuition prices. She hypothesized that colleges that refuse to admit men in order to provide an "all women" campus experience would also end up charging higher tuition prices for their educational services. Her reason is that the preference to matriculate to a "male free" environment is held rather intensely by a small group of women. Their demand sends a signal to the administrators and trustees of the institution to provide them with a "male free" classroom environment. Providing a "male free" campus life may also be more costly for the administration of the college since the admissions committee now has to limit its search for qualified students to roughly one-half of the college age population. Crofton's empirical analysis suggests that women s colleges do indeed charge higher tuition rates.

So who is discriminating really? Are the owners of the business, the trustees, certain employees already at work, or the sovereign customers? Consider the case of the professional sports association such as the National Hockey League (NHL). For quite some time the NHL explored ways to boost attendance at its games. In his contribution to this issue, Professor Rodney J. Paul examines the policy changes initiated by the NHL in terms of their quantitative impact on stadium attendance. Somewhat paradoxically, Paul concludes that the customers enjoy the physical violence and fighting on the ice as part of the game itself. A good swing of punches and the prospect of bodily injuries attracts fans in large numbers both in the United States and in Canada.

In Professor Longley's paper he asks why French Canadian hockey players are systematically underrepresented among those NHL teams based in the United States. The issue for Longley is whether the discrimination is the result of "customer discrimination" or "employer discrimination" or something else entirely. Longley's fixed-effects model suggests that the source of the discrimination against Canadian players flows from the fans themselves. Do the fans have a prejudice against French Canadian players? Perhaps we should spring back to Professor Paul's thesis--is it that the French Canadian players are less violent and therefore less desired by the U.S. hockey team owners?

Next, Professor Mark Lavoie's paper offers additional evidence about the economic plight of qualified French Canadian hockey players. Apparently, at the time of the draft when the players are recruited by the team owners, the future offensive performance of French Canadian players is seriously undervalued, especially by teams located in the United States. In Canada, the English Canadians behave in a similar manner toward European hockey players!

It is challenging to try to reconcile the findings of Professors Longley, Paul, and Lavoie. Could French Canadian players be less violent in their offensive play causing the managers to discount their future market value in attracting large stadium audiences? If there were a bias against French Canadians, it would be curious to know whether it is a bias against ethnic origins or simply a cultural characteristic associated with this group of players. That remains to be done. Again, I invite comments on this sort of question.

With all this quantitative evidence suggesting discrimination in professional sports one might ask whether it makes sense for colleges and universities to place such a strong emphasis on recruiting student-athletes for campus life. Do these commercial market-oriented values corrupt the higher values associated with education and self-reflection?

In his article, Professor Patrick James Rishe asks what the impact of college sports has on student academic success. He finds that in general overall graduation rates among students are not sensitive to the level of a school's athletic success. Still, among women, who typically graduate at higher rates than men in general regardless of whether or not the school has a prominent athletic program, they graduate in an even more pronounced way at schools with prominent athletic programs. Rishe's evidence suggests that schools with rigorous athletic programs have somehow insulated their academic programs quite well.

While we are on the subject of academic programs, I am happy to include a short but powerful paper by Professor Jeffrey H. Bair. Bair has found that the top-ranked graduate programs in finance are the same programs that hire each other's graduates. This can be taken as some evidence that academic nepotism is alive and well in America but correlates well with academic excellence.