Masked at the Mean: Racial Wage Disparities Across the Earnings Distribution in European Soccer

This paper investigates racial wage disparities across the earnings distribution by examining the labor market for European professional soccer players. Utilizing professional sports as an empirical laboratory with objective performance metrics, I analyze how discrimination varies across different tiers of player income. Crucially, while standard mean-based regressions reveal no statistically significant racial wage gap on average, analyzing the entire earnings distribution paints a different picture. Through both quantile regression and individual fixed-effects analyses, I document a "crossover" effect: Black players face a significant wage discount at the lower end of the earnings distribution but command a wage premium at the top. This pattern is consistent with the "higher-standard" hypothesis of discrimination, suggesting that minority workers face an elevated evaluation threshold to achieve top-tier compensation. Consequently, only those with exceptional productivity are able to clear this higher threshold and reach the top of the earnings distribution.

Working paper

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