The Location of pay discrimination in the National Hockey League

The present paper takes another look at this issue of salary discrimination in ice hockey, using Longley's method. The main differences with Longley's paper, are that: (i) I deal with the players of the 1993-94 season instead of those of 1989-90; (ii) the situation of defensemen, as well as that of forwards, is examined; (iii) several more determinants of salaries are added to Longley's three variables (career games played, points per game, team revenues); (iv) the number of interaction terms has been reduced, ironically yielding additional information.
I start the paper with an examination of the grounds that would induce teams from a given location to discriminate against non-local players. The second section of the paper describes the determinants of pay in the NHL. The third section examines the obtained empirical results with respect to team location. The main outcome of my study is that salary discrimination based on location appears to be a weak but pervasive phenomenon, more surely so in English Canada. An incidental outcome of the study is that players located in English Canada teams were underpaid during the 1993-94 season.