No Pain, No Gain? Effort and Productivity in Professional Soccer, pp. 124-139

Pamela Wicker
Joachim Prinz
Daniel Weimar
Christian Deutscher
Thorsten Upmann

Several determinants of player values like productivity and human capital have been investigated in previous research; however, the influence of individual effort has been neglected. This study assumes that effort could be a signaling device and analyzes the effect of effort on market values of soccer players. Secondary data on player statistics and market values from the 2011/2012 season and the first half of the 2012/2013 season of the German Bundesliga were collected (n=877). Technical innovations that record routes and running distances in soccer allow using total running distance and number of intensive runs as effort measures. The results showed that effort had an insignificant or negative impact on logged market values and changes in market values. Only the interaction between intensive runs and tackling rate had a positive effect on logged market values, but not on changes in market values.