• The impact of health shocks on...

*Result*: The impact of health shocks on worker performance: Evidence from Major League Baseball.

Title:
The impact of health shocks on worker performance: Evidence from Major League Baseball.
Authors:
Chikish Y; SUNY Purchase, USA. Electronic address: iuliia.chikish@purchase.edu., Humphreys BR; West Virginia University, USA. Electronic address: brhumphreys@mail.wvu.edu.
Source:
Economics and human biology [Econ Hum Biol] 2025 Dec; Vol. 59, pp. 101539. Date of Electronic Publication: 2025 Oct 24.
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Language:
English
Journal Info:
Publisher: Elsevier Science Country of Publication: Netherlands NLM ID: 101166135 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1873-6130 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 1570677X NLM ISO Abbreviation: Econ Hum Biol Subsets: MEDLINE
Imprint Name(s):
Original Publication: Amsterdam ; New York : Elsevier Science, c2003-
MeSH Terms:
Baseball*/injuries , Collateral Ligament, Ulnar*/injuries , Collateral Ligament, Ulnar*/surgery , Work Performance*/statistics & numerical data , Work Performance*/economics, Humans ; Male ; Adult ; Young Adult
Contributed Indexing:
Keywords: Career length; Health shocks; Major League Baseball; Tommy John surgery
Entry Date(s):
Date Created: 20251028 Date Completed: 20251211 Latest Revision: 20251211
Update Code:
20260130
DOI:
10.1016/j.ehb.2025.101539
PMID:
41151476
Database:
MEDLINE

*Further Information*

*A small, recent, growing literature examines the impact of health shocks in the form of illness or disease, and interventions aimed at mitigating the impact of these health shocks, on labor market outcomes. These papers report evidence that labor market outcomes improve significantly following health shocks and interventions. We extend this analysis to a novel setting where a workplace injury represents the health shock and s surgical procedure to repair this injury represents the intervention. We employ matching methods to construct a counterfactual comparison group of uninjured Major League Baseball (MLB) pitchers and compare labor market outcome in this group to treated MLB pitchers who experienced ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) injuries and underwent a reconstructive ligament repair procedure. Surgical repair of UCL injuries extends post-injury MLB pitcher careers by roughly 1.3 seasons relative to matched uninjured pitchers, a 14.5% increase that generates substantial economic benefits for players and teams. Post-injury and treatment pitcher performance, in terms of batting success of hitters faced by treated pitchers, improves by roughly 8%.
(Copyright © 2025 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)*

*Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.*