Do Star Performers Produce More Stars? Peer Effects and Learning in Elite Teams / Casey Ichniowski, Anne Preston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ichniowski, Casey.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Preston, Anne.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w20478.

NBER working paper series no. w20478

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2014.