On the trace of Coxeter elements

Let W be a Weyl group and let w be a Coxeter elememt of minimal length of W. In the early 1970’s I.G.Macdonald stated that the trace of w on an irreducible representation of W is 0,1 or -1. In this paper we give a proof of this statement and of an Iwahori-Hecke algebra version of it.