Working Paper: NBER ID: w29446
Authors: Britta Glennon; Francisco Morales; Seth Carnahan; Exequiel Hernandez
Abstract: We investigate the effect of employing skilled immigrants on the competitive performance of organizations by studying European football (soccer) clubs in Germany, Italy, France, England, and Spain from 1990-2020. Detailed microdata from this setting offers unusual transparency on the migration and hiring of talent and their contribution to collective performance. Further, country-level rules govern how immigrant players are defined and the number of immigrant players that clubs can deploy. Using changes to these rules as the basis for instrumental variables, we find that the number of immigrant players in the club’s starting lineup has a positive local average treatment effect on the club’s performance. We find evidence that immigrant players enhance club performance because they exhibit higher individual talent than natives and because they enable their clubs to deploy a wider variety of on-field strategies and actions. The latter mechanism is novel to the literature.
Keywords: skilled immigrants; competitive performance; European football clubs; immigration policy
JEL Codes: F16; F22; F23; J61
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Immigrant players (J61) | Individual talent compared to native players (Z22) |
| Immigrant players (J61) | Greater variety of strategic actions available to teams (C73) |
| Immigrant players (J61) | Team coordination and strategy (M54) |
| Employing skilled immigrants (J61) | Competitive performance of European football clubs (Z21) |
| Each additional immigrant player in a club's starting lineup (Z22) | Margin of victory (D79) |