The Role of African Americans in the Executive Labor Market: The Case of Head Coaching in College Basketball

In this paper, we examine how the number of African American and White American coaches in college basketball evolved since 1947. Particularly, we focus on 1973 when the league split up. The separation created asymmetric regulatory requirements. This led to a significant difference in the number of African American coaches. The evidence suggests that less regulated institutions employ fewer African American coaches. The results are time consistent, not clustered geographically, and unrelated to specific institutions. Our results have policy implications for college sports as well as other industries which have similar working conditions