Income, leisure and proficiency: an economic study of football performance

Abstract

The influence of income, across countries, on the proficiency of leisure, as measure by international football achievement is addressed. It is widely concluded that leisure is a normal good, however; little research has been conducted on the influences of efforts to become proficient at a specific leisure activity. While the law of diminishing marginal productivity indicates that leisure proficiency will increase at a decreasing rate with increases in time allocated toward the leisure activity, the second-order effect of income on neither leisure nor leisure proficiency can theoretically be determined. To estimate these effects, an empirical examination of FIFA's World Rankings has been conducted. The results indicate that leisure proficiency on an aggregate level is positively associated with income and increases at a decreasing rate. This subsequently provides evidence that the consumption of leisure on an aggregate level also increases at a decreasing rate with increases in income.

Effect of Linguistic Heterogeneity on Technology Transfer: An Economic Study of FIFA Football Rankings

“…Points (Houston andWilson 2002, Yamamura 2008 a). The football experience seems to lead to an accumulation of information about technique and the strategy required for improvement of performance.…”

“…Following Houston and Wilson (2002) and Yamamura (2008a), I take the FIFA world ranking points as a proxy for the proficiency of a nation in international football. I estimate its determinants and use panel data from FIFA member countries for the years 1993-1998 10 to control the unobserved countries" specific effects.…”

“…This is reflected by the fact that in 2008,208 Ranking (e.g., Hoffmann et al, 2002, Houston and Wilson 2002.…”

When Drains and Gains Coincide: Migration and International Football Performance

“…Following previous literature (Houston and Wilson, 2002;Yamamura, 2008Yamamura, , 2009), we use the number of World Cup appearances as measure of historical performance.…”

“…5 See e.g. Gerrard (2002), Magee and Sugden (2002), Andreff (2004), Poli (2006; Darby (2007aDarby ( , 2007b, Darby, Akindes and Kirwin (2007 Empirical studies have shown that economic, demographic, cultural, historical and climatic factors are important determinants of international football performance (Hoffmann, Lee and Ramasamy, 2002;Houston and Wilson, 2002;Torgler, 2006;MacMillan and Smith, 2007).…”