Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Commentary: "How Much Is That Player In The Window? The One With The Early Birthday?" Relative Age Influences The Value Of The Best Soccer Players, But Not The Best Businesspeople, Luca Fumarco, Benjamin G. Gibbs

Faculty Publications

Fuelled by Gladwell's (2008), researchers have expanded their gaze beyond sports for evidence of the Relative Age Effect: that something as arbitrary as the month you were born in has important consequence for later life success. In line with Furley et al. (2016), we agree that any RAE outside of sports deserves closer scrutiny, but unlike Furley et al., we argue that we should not expect to find evidence of RAE for labor market outcomes in the first place, because there is not sufficient evidence of uniform age cut-offs in school.