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The impact of cultural differences on the success of elite labor migration—Evidence from professional soccer

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  • Joost Bosker

    (Braunschweig Institute of Technology)

  • Marc Gürtler

    (Braunschweig Institute of Technology)

Abstract

The literature finds that cultural differences have a negative impact on the success of international labor migration. However, modeling cultural effects requires a variety of individual-level, firm-level and country-level data that are not sufficiently considered in the literature. Precisely, previous migration experiences are not taken into account and the culture effect is not isolated from adaptation effects that occur with any change of employer. We find that an identified culture effect is biased if such data are not considered. To take these aspects into account, we utilize soccer data with its abundance of single player information and leverage the approaches established in Operations Research to model soccer player performance. To this end, we extend a prominent mixed-effects model to fit the case of international migration and find contrary results compared to the literature: cultural differences positively affect employee value in the long term and we identify a distinct and positive culture effect in the short run for switches between industry-leading firms. Finally, we show that our results are not driven by peculiarities of soccer player data by using a reduced model without isolating general adaptation difficulties from cultural differences. In this (too) simple model, in accordance with the literature, the biased negative culture effect emerges.

Suggested Citation

  • Joost Bosker & Marc Gürtler, 2024. "The impact of cultural differences on the success of elite labor migration—Evidence from professional soccer," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 341(2), pages 781-824, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:annopr:v:341:y:2024:i:2:d:10.1007_s10479-024-06200-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s10479-024-06200-4
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cultural distance; Culture effect; Employee evaluation; International migration; Mixed-effects model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • Z22 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - Labor Issues

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