nep-spo New Economics Papers
on Sports and Economics
Issue of 2020‒03‒23
one paper chosen by
Humberto Barreto
DePauw University

  1. Within-season dismissals of football managers: evidence from the French Ligue 1 By Luc Arrondel; Richard Duhautois; Cédric Zimmer

  1. By: Luc Arrondel (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Richard Duhautois (LIRSA - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche en sciences de l'action - CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM], CEET - Centre d'études de l'emploi et du travail - CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM] - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche - Ministère du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Santé); Cédric Zimmer (LIRSA - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche en sciences de l'action - CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM], CEET - Centre d'études de l'emploi et du travail - CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM] - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche - Ministère du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Santé)
    Abstract: There have been many studies of the impact of manager turnover on club performance, especially in European leagues. The methodology used and the measures for performance do not seem to affect the results of the different studies. However, studies using a control group have generally had inconclusive results (Scelles and Llorca, 2019). Our paper examines the impact of within-season manager change on club performance using information from the French Ligue 1 over the period 1998-2018. The clubs that change their manager have different characteristics from clubs that do not. Some may be observed (as points before dismissal), and others remain unobservable in the data. We use an empirical method that takes observable differences between clubs into account (through exact matching) and corrects for unobserved characteristics (through difference-in-differences). Our results show that the overall effects of a change of manager on team performance are insignificant, except in the short term where they are positive and statistically significant for the majority at the 10 % level. Decomposing between home and away games, the effect is only positive and significant for home games, suggesting that this would be more the consequence of fan pressure (through satisfaction with a board decision) than any difference in quality between the old and the new manager.
    Keywords: Exact-matching,French Ligue 1,football manager dismissals,Team performance
    Date: 2020–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-02505315&r=all

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