Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments July 16, 2014 erstellt
Beschreibung:
This paper considers a relative age effect in association football (soccer) for Republic of Ireland under twenty-one international footballers over two intervals: from November 1981 to November 1994 and from September 2007 to May 2013. As the registration date for organised youth soccer in Ireland differed between both periods, these intervals provide scope for a natural experiment to test for a shifting relative age effect. The paper confirms the existence of a relative age effect with a selection bias toward players born in the earlier months of the registration year for both intervals. Policy recommendations aimed at reducing the impact of relative age effects are discussed and the Irish case is proposed as a benchmark to consider strategies to minimise relative age effects