Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/315284 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Citation: 
[Journal:] Annals of Operations Research [ISSN:] 1572-9338 [Volume:] 341 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] Springer US [Place:] New York, NY [Year:] 2024 [Pages:] 781-824
Publisher: 
Springer US, New York, NY
Abstract: 
The literature finds that cultural differences have a negative impact on the success of international labor migration. However, modeling cultural effects requires a variety of individual-level, firm-level and country-level data that are not sufficiently considered in the literature. Precisely, previous migration experiences are not taken into account and the culture effect is not isolated from adaptation effects that occur with any change of employer. We find that an identified culture effect is biased if such data are not considered. To take these aspects into account, we utilize soccer data with its abundance of single player information and leverage the approaches established in Operations Research to model soccer player performance. To this end, we extend a prominent mixed-effects model to fit the case of international migration and find contrary results compared to the literature: cultural differences positively affect employee value in the long term and we identify a distinct and positive culture effect in the short run for switches between industry-leading firms. Finally, we show that our results are not driven by peculiarities of soccer player data by using a reduced model without isolating general adaptation difficulties from cultural differences. In this (too) simple model, in accordance with the literature, the biased negative culture effect emerges.
Subjects: 
Cultural distance
Culture effect
Employee evaluation
International migration
Mixed-effects model
JEL: 
F22
J61
Z22
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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