Article by Inna Zaitseva and Daniil Shaposhnikov Published in Applied Economics

The paper 'Moneyball in Offensive versus Defensive Actions in Football' examines football labour market efficiency by comparing the value of players' offensive and defensive actions.

Market inefficiency, known as the Moneyball effect, has been documented in various sports over recent decades, and this empirical question remains relevant across many sports markets. This paper focuses on football, where fans and club managers often value forwards more highly than defenders. Football's rules, however, imply that goals scored and goals prevented contribute equally to a team's victory. Economic theory therefore predicts that the marginal return on offensive and defensive effort should be equal. This prediction can potentially be violated in football, which may lead to inefficiency in the football labour market. To test this hypothesis, the authors use two separate datasets — at the team-match level and the player-season level (1,224 and 772 observations, respectively) — covering two seasons (2017/18–2018/19) of the German Bundesliga. The authors compare the relative contribution of offensive and defensive actions to a team's chances of winning with their relative contribution to players' market value. It turns out that defensive actions are undervalued by the market relative to offensive ones. The full paper is available on the journal's website.