한국프로야구 선수노동시장의 비효율성 : 엄격한 외국인선수 규제의 영향

초록

The KBO(Korea Baseball Organization) League has implemented strict regulations on foreign players for various baseball leagues. The primary purpose of the KBO regulations on foreign players is to protect and develop the skills of domestic players. This trade restriction has resulted in a unique players" labor market. There is a huge salary gap between domestic players and foreign players. Korean free-agent players get huge salaries, while foreign free-agent players get competitive salaries. This is mainly due to a quota on imports and a salary cap on foreign players. This paper focuses on the strict regulations of foreign players in the KBO players" labor market and empirically analyzes the market efficiency. Panel data models were set up by collecting the annual data on salaries and player performance between 2017 and 2021. Using econometric regression analysis, we empirically estimated the magnitude of the performance-salary relationship gap between domestic FA players and foreign players. The regression models revealed that domestic free-agent players got more than 9-times the salaries of foreign players in a single WAR(Wins Above Replacement) measurement unit. The KBO-imposed trade restriction that limits the number of foreign players and total salaries has resulted in poor conduct and performance in the KBO League. It is advised that the current strict restrictions implemented by the KBO League on foreign players should be relaxed, up to the level of the Japan NPB League regulation. This will help in the overall improvement and enhance the market efficiency of the KBO League. Furthermore, it is projected that the performance of Korean players will be greatly improved.

키워드