Mobility between Employers and Assortative Matching: Field Evidence from Soccer Data

Abstract

Job mobility is an outstanding characteristic of most labor markets. However, the economic literature for the most part has focused on occupational choice and has not paid attention to whether this mobility implies movements to better or worse firms. One reason for this is that in general it is not possible to establish if the new employer is better or worse than the previous employer. In sports markets there is a very natural way to rank firms (clubs). We exploit this simple idea to study the determinants of promotions and demotions of workers between employers and empirically test the existence of assortative matching. We find that performance is positively correlated with player's career. There is a matching between good teams and good players and vice versa. Players with better performance have higher probabilities of being promoted and players with worse performance have higher probabilities of being demoted. Older players and players that have been transfered in the past have higher mobility but not a clear tendency to be promoted or demoted.

Keywords: assortative matching, soccer, mobility between employers