Born out-of-season: Talent Allocation and Economic Conditions

Marta Boczon () and Battista Severgnini ()
Additional contact information
Marta Boczon: Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School, Postal: Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics, Porcelaenshaven 16 A. 1. floor, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark, https://research.cbs.dk/da/persons/marta-boczon/
Battista Severgnini: Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School, Postal: Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics, Porcelaenshaven 16 A. 1. floor, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark, https://research.cbs.dk/da/persons/battista-severgnini/

No 2-2026, Working Papers from Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper studies how regional economic conditions, birth timing, and institutional rules shape talent allocation into high-risk/high-reward payoff structure occupations. Using rich data on English-born professional footballers and exploiting exogenous variation from European Structural Funds in the United Kingdom (1990–2000), we show that improved local conditions reduced the share of summer-born children, who are disadvantaged by age-based cutoffs in youth academies but exhibit higher underlying talent. Although regional income per capita did not significantly change, fertility timing shifted, shrinking this high-potential group: players born after the intervention exhibit lower peak market values, reflecting how economic and institutional factors can misallocate talent.

Keywords: Talent allocation; Early-life conditions; Birth-timing; Professional sports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J24 R11 Z22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2026-01-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10398/c83fb179-7fed-4082-aeb4-5c5d2f9ffca1 Full text (application/pdf)
Full text not avaiable

Related works:
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:hhs:cbsnow:2026_002

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics, Porcelaenshaven 16 A. 1.floor, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CBS Library Research Registration Team ().