Seasonal Home Advantage in English Professional Football; 1974–2018

We study seasonal home advantage in English professional football over the period 1974 to 2018. We distinguish between absolute home advantage, enjoyed equally by all teams in a division, and relative home advantage, which differs among teams in the division. We find that absolute home advantage is substantial, ranging from 0.59 to 0.64 in terms of points per game or 0.44 to 0.46 in terms of goal difference. Likewise, clubs differ substantially in the relative home advantage they enjoy. Relative home advantage is positively related to within-team variation in attendance and the use of an artificial pitch. Despite big cross-divisional differences in attendance, absolute home advantage is about the same in all divisions. Finally, there is a substantial decline in absolute home advantage over time that materializes equally across divisions

The transfer system in European football: A pro-competitive no-poaching agreement?

We assess the proclaimed pro-competitive effects of the “transfer system”, the no-poaching agreement governing the European football (soccer) labor market. A major argument to legitimize this system is that transfer fees, which hiring clubs pay to release players from their current clubs, redistribute revenues from large market to small market clubs. This would strengthen small clubs’ financial clout and their ability to compete in sporting terms. Player transfer fees represent over 10 billion Euros in asset value in the financial statements of the 202 clubs we analyze. Still, small market clubs rarely obtain substantial revenues from the transfer market. The main beneficiaries are clubs around the middle of the market size distribution. A select group of large market clubs makes significant transfer losses, but this does not undo their initial financial advantage. Overall, the transfer system therefore leads to a very minor reduction in revenue inequality

Manager migration, learning-by-hiring, and cultural distance in international soccer

Research Summary: We investigate the international transfer of managerial know-how by analyzing manager migration patterns in the setting of international soccer. We characterize a country's managerial know-how by estimating a stochastic frontier model, which relates the country's soccer performance to socioeconomic and climatic conditions. We find evidence of learning-by-hiring in that hiring a migrant manager hailing from a high know-how country is beneficial to the destination country's performance. Larger cultural distance between the migrant manager and destination country reduces the effectiveness of learning-by-hiring, but this effect is moderated by the migrant manager's prior international experience. The transfer of managerial know-how contributes to the overall convergence of low-performing versus high-performing soccer countries. Managerial Summary: In this study, we ask whether firms in developing countries, which often suffer from having low-quality manage

Human Capital, Firm Capabilities, and Innovation

Are differences in inventor productivity due to differences in inventors’ skills or differences in the capabilities of the firms they work for? We analyze a 37-year panel that tracks the patenting of U.S. inventors and find strong evidence for serial correlation in inventors’ productivity. We apply an econometric technique developed by Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis (1999) to decompose the contributions of inventors’ human capital and firm capabilities for productivity. Our estimates suggest human capital is 4-5 times more important than firm capabilities for explaining the variance in inventor productivity. High human capital inventors work for firms that have (i) other high human capital inventors, (ii) superior financial performance, and (iii) weak firm-specific invention capabilities. On the margins, managers should emphasize selecting talent rather than training workers to enhance innovation performance

Human Capital, Firm Capabilities, and Innovation

Are differences in inventor productivity due to differences in inventors’ skills or differences in the capabilities of the firms they work for? We analyze a 37-year panel that tracks the patenting of U.S. inventors and find strong evidence for serial correlation in inventors’ productivity. We apply an econometric technique developed by Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis (1999) to decompose the contributions of inventors’ human capital and firm capabilities for productivity. Our estimates suggest human capital is 4-5 times more important than firm capabilities for explaining the variance in inventor productivity. High human capital inventors work for firms that have: (i) other high human capital inventors, (ii) superior financial performance, and (iii) weak firm-specific invention capabilities. On the margins, managers should emphasize selecting talent rather than training workers to enhance innovation performance