Racial Labour market discrimination: The wage difference between football players in Italy

This research investigates racial discrimination in the labour market. Specifically, the difference in wage between white and black football players in the Italian Serie A. The expectation is that white players make more money than their black peers, while their performance characteristics are the same. This is tested with a dataset containing 469 players in a period from 2010 to 2015. In total there are 1585 observations. This data comes from different websites containing information about football players, like their age and different performance characteristics (goals scored and assists). From the ordinary least squared regressions with fixed effects and multiple matching methods follows that it is likely that black players earn less money, but the difference is not significantly different from zero. In conclusion, there is no hard evidence for wage discrimination in the Italian Serie A but there is a possibility that players get discriminated against in other parts of the labour market than the wage. This is in line with research in different football competitions.