Muscle drain versus brain gain in association football: technology transfer through player emigration and manager immigration

Abstract

To test theories of migration and economic development, this article examines whether international football teams benefit from having players playing abroad in stronger leagues and from employing managers from countries with stronger leagues. The results provide evidence in support of the former effect. However, there is a negative impact from employing managers from countries with superior leagues.

Keywords:

• migration
• human capital
• association football
• FIFA ranking

JEL Classification:

• F22
• J24
• O15

Notes

¹ A related literature (e.g. Alvarez et al., 2011; Binder and Findlay, 2012) looks at whether there is an impact on the performance of a national team from having nondomestic players within those national leagues, i.e., whether there is a ‘crowding-out’ of domestic talent.

² A related paper by Yamamura (2009) finds that the ranking points of developing countries catch up with those of developed countries. However, his model does not explicitly take account of player migration.

³ Details on how the rankings are calculated are provided here: http://www.fifa.com/worldranking/procedureandschedule/menprocedure/index.html

⁴ The migration index used by Berlinschi et al. (2013) relates to between 2 and 3 years prior to the ranking points used in their estimation, acknowledging that ‘acquiring football skills is a process that takes time’. We find little difference between using lagged or concurrent player export variables.

⁵ In our data set, out of a total of 6049 players, 1634 play in a stronger league than their home league (and therefore have a positive value (for leaguepoints minus domestic points)) while only 183 play in a weaker league than their home league (and have a negative value). Just over 30%, therefore, of international players in 2010 played outside their own national league.

⁶ Substitute appearances are counted as one-third of a full appearance.

⁷ Results from alternative specifications are available on request from the authors.