Career Prospects and Effort Incentives: Evidence from Professional Soccer

50 Pages Posted: 17 Jan 2015

See all articles by Jeanine Miklós-Thal

Jeanine Miklós-Thal

University of Rochester - Simon Business School

Hannes Ullrich

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) - Innovation, Management, Service; University of Copenhagen - Department of Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: December 2014

Abstract

It is difficult to test the prediction that future career prospects create implicit effort incentives because researchers cannot randomly “assign” career prospects to economic agents. To overcome this challenge, we use data from professional soccer, where employees of the same club face different external career opportunities depending on their nationality. We test whether the career prospect of being selected to a Euro Cup national team affects players' pre-Cup performances, using nationals of countries that did not participate in the Euro Cup as a control group. We find that the Euro Cup career prospect has positive effects on the performances of players with intermediate chances of being selected to their national team, but negative effects on the performances of players whose selection is very probable. Our findings have implications for the incentive effects of within-firm promotions and of external career opportunities.

Keywords: incentives, effort, career concerns, reputation, contests, tournaments, promotions

JEL Classification: D23, L29, M52

Suggested Citation

Miklós-Thal, Jeanine and Ullrich, Hannes and Ullrich, Hannes, Career Prospects and Effort Incentives: Evidence from Professional Soccer (December 2014). DIW Berlin Discussion Paper No. 1432, Simon Business School Working Paper No. FR 15-04, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2550699 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2550699

Jeanine Miklós-Thal

University of Rochester - Simon Business School ( email )

Rochester, NY 14627
United States

Hannes Ullrich (Contact Author)

University of Copenhagen - Department of Economics ( email )

Øster Farimagsgade 5, Bygn 26
Copenhagen, 1353
Denmark

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) - Innovation, Management, Service ( email )

Mohrenstraße 58
Berlin, 10117
Germany
+493089789521 (Phone)

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