IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v36y1998i4p688-92.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Moral Hazard and the Effects of the Designated Hitter Rule Revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Goff, Brian L
  • Shughart, William F, II
  • Tollison, Robert D

Abstract

New evidence seems to cast doubt on the hypothesis that the American League's adoption of the designated hitter rule in 1973 created a moral hazard problem for pitchers. In particular, the substitution of hard-hitting designated hitters for weak-hitting pitchers in the American League supposedly explains the lion's share of interleague differences in hit batsmen. However, theoretical and empirical questions about the explanatory power of this alternative hypothesis leads the authors to the conclusion that moral hazard remains the most plausible reason why more American League than National League batters have been hit by pitches in twenty-two of the past twenty-five seasons. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Goff, Brian L & Shughart, William F, II & Tollison, Robert D, 1998. "Moral Hazard and the Effects of the Designated Hitter Rule Revisited," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(4), pages 688-692, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:36:y:1998:i:4:p:688-92
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Charles Bradbury & Douglas Drinen, 2006. "Research Notes: The Designated Hitter, Moral Hazard, and Hit Batters," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(3), pages 319-329, August.
    2. Kendall, Graham & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2017. "When sports rules go awry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(2), pages 377-394.
    3. Akihiko Kawaura & Sumner J. La Croix, 2007. "The Designated Hitter Rule and Team Defensive Strategy in Japan's Professional Baseball Leagues," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(5), pages 491-504, October.
    4. Akihiko Kawaura & Sumner La Croix, 2010. "The Designated Hitter Rule in Baseball as a Natural Experiment," Working Papers 201005, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    5. Shane Sanders & Joel Potter & Justin Ehrlich & Justin Perline & Christopher Boudreaux, 2021. "Informed voters and electoral outcomes: a natural experiment stemming from a fundamental information-technological shift," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(1), pages 257-277, October.
    6. Akihiko Kawaura, 2010. "Designated Hitter Rule Debate: A Search for Mr. Hyde in Pitchers," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(3), pages 349-357, June.
    7. Liam J.A. Lenten & Jan Libich & Petr Stehlík, 2013. "Policy Timing and Footballers' Incentives," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(6), pages 629-655, December.
    8. Gregory A. Trandel, 2004. "Hit by Pitches," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 5(1), pages 87-92, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:36:y:1998:i:4:p:688-92. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.