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Social Indicators Research
Published in: Social Indicators Research 3/2014

01-07-2014

Is Football an Indicator of Development at the International Level?

Authors: Roberto Gásquez, Vicente Royuela

Published in: Social Indicators Research | Issue 3/2014

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine whether football can be considered an indicator of development at the international level. An empirical econometric model is designed in order to analyse development in terms of GDP per capita as well as in terms of the Human Development Index. Cross-sectional and time-series information are used. The results suggest that FIFA rankings of national teams can be used to complement our understanding of multidimensional development, in particular, in those countries where the availability of information is not as good as researchers would like.
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Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
Apart from per capita wealth, other variables can be considered important to account for differences in sporting success between countries. GDP per capita is not the only variable that explains sporting success, government involvement, for example, is argued to be a fundamental factor (Li et al. 2009).
 
2
We can nevertheless agree on a theoretical framework for the study of some of these variables: FDI (Borensztein et al. 1998), exports (Feder 1982), government size (Ram 1986), trust (Zack and Knack (2001) and institutions (Glaeser et al. 2004).
 
3
Other variables (control variables) are analysed simply through their influence on the steady-state position (Barro and Lee 1994).
 
4
Data on GDP per capita and HDI come from the Hybrid HDI data, available at http://​hdr.​undp.​org/​en/​data/​trends/​hybrid/​.
 
5
The FIFA ranking has been used by Hoffman et al. (2002b), Houston and Wilson (2002), Leeds and Leeds (2009) and Macmilan and Smith (2007) to analyse the relationship between the success of national football teams and economic development. The FIFA ranking is available at http://​www.​fifa.​com/​worldranking/​rankingtable/​index.​html.
 
6
This period is chosen because FIFA rankings commenced in 1993 and the Hybrid HDI ends in 2010.
 
7
This is the number of countries available in the Hybrid HDI. The full list of countries analysed can be consulted in “Appendix 2”.
 
8
Openness data come from the Penn World Table (PWT) 7.1.
 
9
Annual population data come from the PWT 7.1.
 
10
Data on investment relative to GDP come from the PWT 7.1.
 
11
Inflation data come from the World Development Indicators.
 
12
Government Consumption data come from the PWT 7.1.
 
13
The data base is available upon request.
 
14
Following Easterly (2007), the current level of GDP is the result of consecutive years of economic growth.
 
15
We have followed the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD list of official development assistance countries (ODA). It consist of all low- and middle-income countries based on gross national income (GNI) per capita as published by the World Bank. The list also includes all of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as defined by the United Nations (UN). This OECD list can be accessed at: http://​www.​oecd.​org/​dac/​stats/​49483614.​pdf.
 
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Metadata
Title
Is Football an Indicator of Development at the International Level?
Authors
Roberto Gásquez
Vicente Royuela
Publication date
01-07-2014
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Social Indicators Research / Issue 3/2014
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0368-x

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