A growing literature has examined what characteristics lead countries to succeed or fail in international soccer. We build on this literature by building a model of national success, where success is measured by the number of “FIFA points” a national team earned. We use the model to generate testable hypotheses regarding the impact of a nation’s political heritage and institutions on its soccer performance. Using OLS and Poisson regressions, we corroborate previous studies and find that success increases with income, population, and having hosted a World Cup competition. We also find that a country’s political institutions and colonial heritage affect its soccer performance. In particular, being a wealthy democracy adds greatly to soccer performance. We also find that the success of a country’s club teams is a good predictor of the national team’s success. We conclude that club success reflects a nation’s willingness and ability to finance soccer success.
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Paper provided by International Association of Sports Economists in its series Working Papers with number
0702.
Find related papers by JEL classification: L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Recreation; Tourism O57 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries F54 - International Economics - - International Relations and International Political Economy - - - Colonialism; Imperialism; Postcolonialism
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