Regional Competition and Knowledge Spillovers - Spatial Dependence in International Football Success

Abstract

The extent to which members of a national team play for a club in a foreign country has been increasing over the last 15 years tremendously. The aim of this paper is to examine empirically the existence of two potential spill-over effects: First, since the members of a confederation compete directly for spots in continental championships as well as in the World Cup and since national rivalry is generally greatest among geographically close countries, it is tested whether a country's national football team's performance is affected by changes in the performance of other nations which are geographically close. Second, knowledge spill-over, which will presumably occur if a national team member plays in a high performing foreign league, are estimated. We find consistent evidence for positive spillovers between national teams of geographically close countries. Around half of the effect can be explained through global player migration.