Coaches on Fire or Firing the Coach? Evidence of the Impact of Coach Changes on Team Performance from Italian Serie A

Argentieri, Alessandro; Canova, Luciano; Manera, Matteo

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3475379

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Coaches on Fire or Firing the Coach? Evidence of the Impact of Coach Changes on Team Performance from Italian Serie A

FEEM Working Paper No. 23.2019

31 Pages Posted: 25 Oct 2019 Last revised: 21 Jan 2020

See all articles by Alessandro Argentieri

Matteo Manera

University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy - Department of Economics, Management and Statistics (DEMS); Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milan, Italy

Date Written: October 25, 2019

Abstract

In this paper, football data from the 2007/2008 to 2016/2017 seasons of the Italian Serie A were used to identify the effects of replacing a coach mid-season due to poor team performance. We used an instrumental variable approach to correlate coach turnover within a season with player productivity and found a very low positive impact of the coach change in the short term but a significant negative impact in the long term. Our findings are also relevant to the literature on management replacement in small-size firms.

Keywords: Italian Football Data, Coach Changes, Team Performance, Models for Panel Data, Instrumental Variables

JEL Classification: C23, C36, M51, Z22

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Argentieri, Alessandro and Canova, Luciano and Manera, Matteo, Coaches on Fire or Firing the Coach? Evidence of the Impact of Coach Changes on Team Performance from Italian Serie A (October 25, 2019). FEEM Working Paper No. 23.2019, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3475379 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3475379