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Do individual salaries depend on the performance of the peers? Prototype heuristic and wage bargaining in the NBA

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  • Oberhofer, Harald
  • Schwinner, Marian

Abstract

This paper analyzes the link between relative market value of representative subsets of athletes in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and individual wages. NBA athletes are categorized with respect to multiple performance characteristics utilizing the k-means algorithm to cluster observations and a group's market value is calculated by averaging real annual salaries. Employing GMM estimation techniques to a dynamic wage equation, we find a statistically significant and positive effect of one-period lagged relative market value of an athlete's representative cluster on individual wages after controlling for past individual performance. This finding is consistent with the theory of prototype heuristic, introduced by Kahneman and Frederick (2002), that NBA teams' judgment about an athlete's future performance is based on a comparison of the player to a prototype group consisting of other but comparable athletes.

Suggested Citation

  • Oberhofer, Harald & Schwinner, Marian, 2017. "Do individual salaries depend on the performance of the peers? Prototype heuristic and wage bargaining in the NBA," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 247, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wus005:5553
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Prototype heuristic; wage bargaining; NBA; Behavioral economics of organization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

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