– The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether the protection that some football teams submit to the football players from its region has a positive effect on the quality of the football players from these regions. Particularly, it is analyzed the natural experiment offered by the Basque Country.
– First are evaluated the productivity of the regions and thereafter it is analyzed the efficiency of the regions using a production function approach. Lastly, it is evaluated the evolution of the human capital from the under-19 to the absolute national team to determine if the human capital protection of the Basque Country clubs is effective in improving the human capital.
– The main finding is that the protection's effect to the productive factors submitted into a competitive environment, exerts a positive influence on the development and growth of this factor, because the protection offers more possibilities of promotion and improving his productive capacity.
– To the best of knowledge there is no paper that has analyzed the effectiveness of a human capital protection policy.
