Stochastic Frontiers and the Temporal Structure of Managerial Efficiency in English Soccer

This article provides estimates of technical efficiency for a panel of managers in English soccer's Premier League for the period 1992 to 1998. In contrast to other studies of sporting team production, efficiency is estimated at the level of the individual manager rather than the club. Fixed and random effects models are used to generate managerial efficiency scores assuming that efficiency is both time invariant and time varying. The efficiency rankings of the different time invariant models are very similar. In contrast, the temporal structure and the estimation procedures of the time-varying models produce very different results. There is evidence that managerial efficiency has fallen over the sample period.