Management Efficiency in Football: An Empirical Analysis of two Extreme Cases

Analysis of managerial efficiency in sport economics typically focuses on evaluating coach decisions instead of assessing the organization as a whole. This paper studies the relative importance of variables related to power and managerial decisions by estimating stochastic production frontiers models for the Chilean and Italian football. We find the presence of technical inefficiencies in both cases. However, managerial decisions play a more significant role in the Italian league. This difference can be explained by a less open and balanced competition in the Chilean case, that could be due to financial constraints faced by small clubs in that country.