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Youth Training Programs and Their Impact on Career and Spell Duration of Professional Soccer Players
Author(s) -
Radoman Mihailo,
Voia Marcel C.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
labour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.403
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1467-9914
pISSN - 1121-7081
DOI - 10.1111/labr.12049
Subject(s) - spell , league , duration (music) , endogeneity , psychology , reputation , covariate , demographic economics , set (abstract data type) , instrumental variable , econometrics , economics , political science , computer science , sociology , art , physics , literature , astronomy , anthropology , law , programming language
A unique data set of post‐war E nglish trained soccer players is used to study the impact of the youth training program they attended on their career and spell duration. Duration models in the spirit of A bbring and van den B erg are employed to estimate local treatment effects of different training programs on players — survival in the top E uropean leagues. The results indicate that the duration patterns of players are dependent on the youth academy they attended. Certain clubs, with a well‐established reputation in developing youth talent, outperform others in terms of producing and evaluating the ability of their youth players to succeed in top European leagues. The spell analysis outlines the nature of the competitive environment in which smaller clubs have a chance to keep up with the larger ones in terms of producing and holding on to homegrown talent. Finally, the results of both analyses addressed unobserved heterogeneity, allowed for nonlinearity of covariates using the cubic spline methodology, and were tested for endogeneity bias using a split sample test.