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Nationalistic bias among international experts: evidence from professional ski jumping

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  • Alex Krumer
  • Felix Otto
  • Tim Pawlowski

Abstract

Ski jumping competitions involve subjective evaluations by judges from different countries. This might lead to nationalistic bias, according to which judges assign higher scores to their compatriots. To test this claim empirically, we exploit within‐performance variation of scores from all World Cup, World Championship, and Olympic Games competitions between the 2010/11 and 2016/17 seasons. Our findings confirm that judges assign significantly higher scores to their compatriots. The magnitude of this nationalistic bias is significantly higher in more corrupt countries. We do not find that judges assign significantly different scores to jumpers whose compatriots are present on the judging panel.

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  • Alex Krumer & Felix Otto & Tim Pawlowski, 2022. "Nationalistic bias among international experts: evidence from professional ski jumping," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(1), pages 278-300, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:124:y:2022:i:1:p:278-300
    DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12451
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    Cited by:

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    2. Travis Richardson & Georgios Nalbantis & Tim Pawlowski, 2023. "Emotional Cues and the Demand for Televised Sports: Evidence from the UEFA Champions League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(8), pages 993-1025, December.
    3. Richard Faltings & Alex Krumer & Michael Lechner, 2023. "Rot‐Jaune‐Verde: On linguistic bias of referees in Swiss soccer," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(3), pages 380-406, August.
    4. Daniel Goller & Maximilian Spath, 2023. "'Good job!' The impact of positive and negative feedback on performance," Papers 2301.11776, arXiv.org.
    5. Dmitry Dagaev & Sofia Paklina & J. James Reade & Carl Singleton, 2024. "The Iron Curtain and Referee Bias in International Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 25(1), pages 126-151, January.

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