Short-term impact of a foreign player quota liberalisation policy on domestic player performance: evidence from a regression discontinuity design

ABSTRACT

We analyse the short-term impact of a policy, which removed the restrictions on the nationality of players playing on the court, on the performance of domestic players in the Turkish Basketball Super League. Previous rule required that, out of five players on the court for a team, at least two had to be native players. The policy change, however, removed that restriction and no specific play time is reserved for native players anymore. Our analysis, which compares two seasons before with two seasons after the policy change, shows that domestic players significantly receive fewer minutes and produce fewer game actions than before. More importantly, our empirical analysis, based on regression discontinuity design, points to a significant reduction in their real output (game actions adjusted for minutes played). This mainly reflects the shifting roles of domestic players, after the policy change, towards more passive actions of resting foreign players and committing tactical fouls in the game.

KEYWORDS:

• Basketball
• foreign player quota
• domestic players
• regression discontinuity design
• policy evaluation

Acknowledgment

The views and opinions presented in this study belong to the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey or its staff.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/ergin-ataman-yonetim-ya-bizleri-anadolu-efes-istanbul-2617707-skorerhaber/.

2. The index awards one point to a player for each positive game actions (points scored, rebounds collected, assists, steals and blocks made) and penalises the player with one point for negative game actions (shots and free throws missed, turnovers made).

3. The details of the assumptions of the RDD analysis are available at Trochim (2006).

Additional information

Funding

None

Notes on contributors

M. Utku Özmen

M. Utku Özmen is an economist at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. His research interests include sports economics, economics of online information as well as macroeconomics and applied microeconometrics