Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Unconditional convergence across countries worldwide is typically rejected in terms of GDP per capita. But when focusing on a specific internationally competitive industry, such as manufacturing, rather than the overall economy, unconditional convergence has been found to hold. As the epitome of competition and globalization, this paper uses the performance of national soccer teams as a further test case. We rely on data of more than 25,000 games between 1950 and 2014 and find clear evidence of unconditional $$\beta $$β - and $$\sigma $$σ