Working Paper: NBER ID: w20478
Authors: Casey Ichniowski; Anne Preston
Abstract: This study investigates the professional soccer industry to ask whether the talent of an individual's co-workers helps explain differences in the rate of human capital accumulation on the job. Data tracking national soccer team performance and the professional leagues their members play for are particularly well suited for developing convincing non-experimental evidence about these kinds of peer effects. The empirical results consistently show that performance improves more after an individual has been a member of an elite team than when he has been a member of lower level teams. The conclusion is borne out by a rich set of complementary data on: national team performance, player-level performance, performance of foreign players who joined elite teams after an exogenous shift in the number of foreign players participating on top club teams, performance of players on national teams in the year just before and the year just after they join an elite club team, and experiences of several national team players obtained through personal interviews.
Keywords: peer effects; human capital; elite teams; soccer; performance
JEL Codes: J0; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| elite team membership (Z22) | individual player performance (Z22) |
| high-performing peers (C92) | individual player performance (Z22) |
| elite team membership (Z22) | national team outcomes (F53) |
| individual player performance (Z22) | national team outcomes (F53) |
| elite team membership (Z22) | player performance changes before and after joining (D29) |