ABSTRACT
Studies of Major League Baseball (MLB) represent the cornerstone of research in sports economics. This chapter examines the components of the unique labor market, and also examines how each impacts player salaries and the performance of industry. It highlights unresolved issues that provide opportunities for future MLB research. Arbitration processes have gone largely unchanged since the implementation of arbitration in 1974. As a result, much of the existing literature could be updated to compare different time periods and to reflect structural changes in MLB but outside of arbitration. The labor market is a small but distinctive component of MLB research. Yet this research is filled with a number of unresolved issues. Together with an eye on the stylized facts of the industry, structural changes, emerging theoretical contributions, and the ever-present abundance of data, many research opportunities are available for the sports economist. The chapter helps to identify and clarify some of the paths available for new discoveries.
