The effects of inter-league competition on labor market discrimination: assessing the impacts of the world hockey association

This paper argues that the presence of competitive, as opposed to monopsonistic, labor markets should reduce the level of entry discrimination. For those teams that have a “taste” for discrimination, competitive labor markets increase the cost of discriminating, because competition bids-up the salaries of the preferred players, relative to the salaries of the non-preferred players. The paper empirically tests this notion by examining the impact on French Canadian players of the short-lived World Hockey Association (WHA).