This repository contains the final project for Math 243: Statisical Learning at Reed College in Fall 2020. Authors of this project are Ali Taqi, Grant Dunlavey, and William Ren. The final paper can be found in the technical-report.pdf file and the final presentation slides in the final-presentation.pdf file.
Major League Baseball’s “competitive balance tax,” first implemented in 2002, has become a favorite subject of outrage among players and fans alike in recent years. On paper, the policy was meant to make the sport more competitive and boost salaries for players on lower-revenue teams. Any team that wanted to spend beyond that cap would pay a “tax” (a share of their excess payroll) to be redistributed to the poorer teams. In practice the policy has effectively become a salary cap. In conjunction with research from Bradbury, this paper seeks to methodically explore the rates of lost potential players along the years in addition to labor share as a predictor.