Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

12-2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Murat Binay

Rights Information

2026 Hannah J Conte

Abstract

This thesis investigates the determinants of player salary in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), with a focus on whether similar performance outputs translate into compensation equally across gendered leagues. Using original player-level data from the 2024 regular season and corresponding base salaries for the 2025-26 (NBA) and 2025 (WNBA) seasons, the study constructs a cross-league dataset of 394 players and estimates a series of ordinary least squares regression models. The analysis isolates four categories of determinants: performance, experience, demographic, and market variables. It incorporates interaction terms to test whether returns to productivity differ systematically by league structure.

Results demonstrate that points per game and years of experience are the most robust predictors of salary in both leagues. Demographic traits such as height also exhibit positive associations. Market factors, including metropolitan population and median household income, have no statistically significant effect. Across all determinants, the league coefficient remains substantially large, indicating that structural features, such as the NBA’s soft cap, the WNBA’s hard cap, and differences in revenue sharing, account for most of the observed pay gap rather than differences in individual determinants. Interaction models reveal that although performance is rewarded similarly in direction across leagues, salary progression over time is notably flatter in the WNBA, consistent with its more constrained compensation system.

These findings suggest that while individual productivity matters in both leagues,

institutional design plays a central role in shaping compensation outcomes. This research contributes to the sports economics literature by providing one of the first direct empirical comparisons of salary determinants across the NBA and the WNBA and underscores how structural labor market differences, not player ability, drive persistent gender disparities in professional basketball compensation.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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