Skidmore College Creative Matter Economics Student Theses and Capstone Projects Economics 2017 The Overlooked Element: An Empirical Analysis of Team Chemistry and Winning Percentage in Major League Baseball Daniel Dasgupta Skidmore College Follow this and additional works at: https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/econ_studt_schol Part of the Other Economics Commons Recommended Citation Dasgupta, Daniel, "The Overlooked Element: An Empirical Analysis of Team Chemistry and Winning Percentage in Major League Baseball" (2017). Economics Student Theses and Capstone Projects. 45. https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/econ_studt_schol/45 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Economics at Creative Matter. It has been accepted for inclusion in Economics Student Theses and Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of Creative Matter. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Overlooked Element: An Empirical Analysis of Team Chemistry and Winning Percentage in Major League Baseball Daniel R. Dasgupta May 2, 2017 A Thesis Submitted to Department of Economics Skidmore College This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the course Senior Seminar (EC 375), during the Spring semester of 2017 Name: Daniel Dasgupta Signature: _________________ 1 Abstract This paper explores the relationship between team chemistry and winning percentage in Major League Baseball. Team chemistry or cohesion, is an unobservable property that is applied to multiple group settings that can have a positive or negative effect on productivity. I have identified several group faultlines that have deterred team chemistry, specifically the formation of subgroups based on birth location, salary and years of experience. In addition, I analyze team salary disparity as another measure of team chemistry based on the team cohesion hypothesis.