JENSEN’S PROBLEM OF GOVERNANCE REVISITED BY THE RELATIVE AGE EFFECT ON SPANISH FOOTBALL

Jose Torres-Pruñonosa

doi:10.12800/ccd.v20i66.2334

Authors

Jose Torres-Pruñonosa Universidad Internacional de la Rioja https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2276-1655

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12800/ccd.v20i66.2334

Keywords:

talent identification, Jensen's governance problem, theory of stakeholders, football academies, Sport Stock Corporations

Abstract

This study analyzes Jensen's problem of governance by examining the Relative Age Effect (thereinafter RAE) on Spanish Football. We analyzed the players of the top eight Spanish football academies (n=736). Four of the academies belong to clubs and four to Sport Stock Corporations (SSCs), all of them are playing in the top tier of Spanish football. We used the Poisson Regression analysis to identify the presence of the relative age effect. The existence of RAE is found to be significant (p<0.001) in both clubs and SSCs. According to Jensen's governance theory, SSCs should be more efficient, and therefore the starting hypothesis would be that they would not be affected by the RAE bias whereas clubs should. The results of the study refute Jensen's problem of governance and are a new contribution to the stakeholder’s theory. It is also evident that the RAE is a bias that notably affects football academies and other sports with a lot of participants.

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