Coaches on Fire or Firing the Coach? Evidence of the Impact of Coach Changes on Team Performance from Italian Serie A
31 Pages Posted: 25 Oct 2019 Last revised: 21 Jan 2020
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