International Soccer Success and National Institutions

Michael Leeds and Eva Marikova Leeds
Additional contact information
Eva Marikova Leeds: Moravian College and Temple University Japan

Journal of Sports Economics, 2009, vol. 10, issue 4, 369-390

Abstract: A growing literature has examined the causes of success in international soccer. We build on this literature by constructing a model of international success, as measured by the number of ``Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) points'' a national team has earned and by the resulting rank. We generate testable hypotheses about the impact of a nation's political regime, colonial heritage, and institutions on its soccer performance. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) and negative binomial regressions, we show that our proxies for these variables affect soccer performance. Specifically, we find that the international success of a country's club teams positively affects the national team's success.

Keywords: soccer; FIFA rankings; institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002508329864 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: International Soccer Success and National Institutions (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:10:y:2009:i:4:p:369-390

DOI: 10.1177/1527002508329864

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Sports Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().