23rd Annual Student Research Conference
Performance and Award Incentives in Professional Baseball
Matthew A. Topi
Mr. Warren Wells, Faculty Mentor
Professional baseball contracts have long been an area of intense scrutiny because of their sheer monetary size as well as the fascination of many of Americas great minds on the national pastime. The inclusion of performance and award incentives in contractual negotiations has been a growing trend over the past few decades because of the many variables of negotiation that can be neutralized by their addition. This trend has spilled over into professional sports, and, based on research conducted on the number of incentives included in contracts for the 2006 season; these incentives have had a large effect on labor economics in professional baseball. There were 140 performance or award incentives included in the contracts of the six teams studied. Sixteen of those 140 were ambiguous or had no available data available to determine their outcome. Of the remaining 124 incentives, 24.19% were vested and 75.81% were not obtained.
Keywords: Contracts, Performance and Award Incentives, Major League Baseball, Negotiation
Topic(s):Interdisciplinary
Business Administration
Economics
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 46-4
Location: MG 2050
Time: 2:00