The Effect of Performance on a Worker's Career: Evidence from Minor League Baseball

The authors analyze the promotion, demotion, and turnover of pitchers in baseball's minor leagues—a labor market for which exceptionally good data on performance are available—in the years 1975–88. They find that the time between a player's assignment to one league and promotion or demotion to another (or exit from professional baseball) declined as his performance deviated from the mean, in either a positive or negative direction. Also negatively associated with the time required to make a determination about a pitcher's ability was his age, which the authors use as a proxy for experience. Pitchers' ages did not, however, affect the highest league level in which they ultimately played.