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Does Transparency Reduce Favoritism and Corruption? Evidence From the Reform of Figure Skating Judging

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  • Eric Zitzewitz

Abstract

Transparency is usually thought to reduce favoritism and corruption by facilitating monitoring by outsiders, but there is concern it can have the perverse effect of facilitating collusion by insiders. In response to vote trading scandals in the 1998 and 2002 Olympics, the International Skating Union (ISU) introduced a number of changes to its judging system, including obscuring which judge issued which mark. The stated intent was to disrupt collusion by groups of judges, but this change also frustrates most attempts by outsiders to monitor judge behavior. The author finds that the “compatriot-judge effect,†which aggregates favoritism (nationalistic bias from own-country judges) and corruption (vote trading), actually increased slightly after the reforms.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Zitzewitz, 2014. "Does Transparency Reduce Favoritism and Corruption? Evidence From the Reform of Figure Skating Judging," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 15(1), pages 3-30, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:15:y:2014:i:1:p:3-30
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002512441479
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    Cited by:

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    2. Krisztina Kis-Katos & Günther G. Schulze, 2013. "Corruption in Southeast Asia: a survey of recent research," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 27(1), pages 79-109, May.
    3. Thomas Dohmen & Jan Sauermann, 2016. "Referee Bias," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 679-695, September.
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    6. Devin G. Pope & Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2018. "Awareness Reduces Racial Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 4988-4995, November.
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    9. 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.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    transparency; corruption; collusion; bias; vote trading; nationalism; judging;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

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