The effects of large-scale, racially-charged violence on labor productivity and racial identity: The riots of 1967–68 and outcomes in Major League Baseball

Abstract

Many major race riots occurred in 1967–68. We investigate whether these riots affected individual labor productivity by studying 240,408 plate appearances from Major League Baseball games in those years. Stacked difference-in-difference and two-way-fixed effects difference-in-difference estimations show that batters, but not pitchers, experienced significantly worsened productivity after major riots in their teams’ home cities. In addition, two-way-fixed effects difference-in-difference estimations show evidence of worsened productivity of pitchers after riots near their birthplaces, and that white batters whose teams’ cities had undergone major riots were hit by fewer pitches from white pitchers. However, these latter results are not robust to stacked difference-in-difference estimators. We discuss these differences in the paper.