Is human capital protection effective? The case of the Basque Country in Spanish football
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether the protection that some football teams submit to the football players from its region has a positive effect on the quality of the football players from these regions. Particularly, it is analyzed the natural experiment offered by the Basque Country.
Design/methodology/approach
First are evaluated the productivity of the regions and thereafter it is analyzed the efficiency of the regions using a production function approach. Lastly, it is evaluated the evolution of the human capital from the under-19 to the absolute national team to determine if the human capital protection of the Basque Country clubs is effective in improving the human capital.
Findings
The main finding is that the protection's effect to the productive factors submitted into a competitive environment, exerts a positive influence on the development and growth of this factor, because the protection offers more possibilities of promotion and improving his productive capacity.
Originality/value
To the best of knowledge there is no paper that has analyzed the effectiveness of a human capital protection policy.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research has benefited from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation Project ECO2011-29314-C02-02. The authors wish to thank the comments received in the IV Congreso Iberoamericano de Economía del Deporte and PET 2013 and the data received from www.bdfutbol.com
Citation
Calero, J. and del Corral, J. (2014), "Is human capital protection effective? The case of the Basque Country in Spanish football", Sport, Business and Management, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 223-236. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBM-07-2013-0025
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited