IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/liv/livedp/20189.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Pressure or Rational Reactions to Incentives? A Historical Analysis of Reasons for Referee Bias in the Spanish Football

Author

Listed:
  • Stefano Cabras
  • J. James Reade
  • J.D. Tena

Abstract

A relevant question in economics is whether cognitive bias can be instigated by social pressure or is it just a rational reaction to incentives in place. Sport, and association football in particular, offer settings in which to gain insights into this question. In this paper we estimate the determinants of the length of time between referee appointments in Spanish soccer as a function of referee decisions in favour of the home and away team in the most recent match by means of a deep-learning model. We do not find strong evidence of an incentive scheme that counteracts well-known home referee biases. Our results also suggest that referees are incentivised to deliver a moderate amount of surprise in the outcome of the game what is consistent with the objective function of consumers and tournament organisers.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefano Cabras & J. James Reade & J.D. Tena, 2018. "Social Pressure or Rational Reactions to Incentives? A Historical Analysis of Reasons for Referee Bias in the Spanish Football," Working Papers 20189, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:liv:livedp:20189
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/schoolofmanagement/research/economics/social-pressure-or-rational-reactions.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dawson, Peter & Dobson, Stephen, 2010. "The influence of social pressure and nationality on individual decisions: Evidence from the behaviour of referees," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 181-191, April.
    2. Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1859-1887.
    3. Pettersson-Lidbom, Per & Priks, Mikael, 2010. "Behavior under social pressure: Empty Italian stadiums and referee bias," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 212-214, August.
    4. Devin G. Pope & Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2018. "Awareness Reduces Racial Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 4988-4995, November.
    5. Peter Dawson & Stephen Dobson & John Goddard & John Wilson, 2007. "Are football referees really biased and inconsistent?: evidence on the incidence of disciplinary sanction in the English Premier League," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 170(1), pages 231-250, January.
    6. Guy Stecklov & Alexander Weinreb & Calogero Carletto, 2018. "Can incentives improve survey data quality in developing countries?: results from a field experiment in India," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 181(4), pages 1033-1056, October.
    7. Luis Garicano & Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Canice Prendergast, 2005. "Favoritism Under Social Pressure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 208-216, May.
    8. Samuelson, William & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1988. "Status Quo Bias in Decision Making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 7-59, March.
    9. Babatunde Buraimo & David Forrest & Robert Simmons, 2010. "The 12th man?: refereeing bias in English and German soccer," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 173(2), pages 431-449, April.
    10. Joseph Price & Marc Remer & Daniel F. Stone, 2012. "Subperfect Game: Profitable Biases of NBA Referees," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 271-300, March.
    11. Simon N. Wood & Natalya Pya & Benjamin Säfken, 2016. "Smoothing Parameter and Model Selection for General Smooth Models," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 111(516), pages 1548-1563, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Bose & Eberhard Feess & Helge Mueller, 2022. "Favoritism towards High-Status Clubs: Evidence from German Soccer," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 422-478.
    2. Stefano Cabras & J. D. Tena, 2023. "Implicit institutional incentives and individual decisions: Causal inference with deep learning models," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(6), pages 3739-3754, September.
    3. Thomas Dohmen & Jan Sauermann, 2016. "Referee Bias," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 679-695, September.
    4. Ulrike Holder & Thomas Ehrmann & Arne König, 2022. "Monitoring experts: insights from the introduction of video assistant referee (VAR) in elite football," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 285-308, February.
    5. Barry Reilly & Robert Witt, 2016. "Disciplinary Sanction and Social Pressure in English Premiership Soccer," Working Paper Series 8816, Department of Economics, University of Sussex.
    6. Andrés Picazo-Tadeo & Francisco Gónzalez-Gómez & Jorge Guardiola Wanden-Berghe, 2011. "Referee home bias due to social pressure. Evidence from Spanish football," Working Papers 1119, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    7. J. James Reade & Dominik Schreyer & Carl Singleton, 2022. "Eliminating supportive crowds reduces referee bias," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(3), pages 1416-1436, July.
    8. Andrea Albanese & Stijn Baert & Olivier Verstraeten, 2020. "Twelve eyes see more than eight. Referee bias and the introduction of additional assistant referees in soccer," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-15, February.
    9. Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo & Francisco González-Gómez & Jorge Guardiola, 2011. "The importance of time in referee home bias due to social pressure. Evidence from Spanish football," FEG Working Paper Series 03/11, Faculty of Economics and Business (University of Granada).
    10. Stijn Baert & Simon Amez, 2018. "No better moment to score a goal than just before half time? A soccer myth statistically tested," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-17, March.
    11. Ryan Dansby & R Todd Jewell, 2014. "A Violent Response to Changing the Rules of the Game: The Case of “The Split” in Scottish Premier League Soccer," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 40(4), pages 473-487, September.
    12. Katherine G. Yewell & Steven B. Caudill & Franklin G. Mixon, Jr., 2014. "Referee Bias and Stoppage Time in Major League Soccer: A Partially Adaptive Approach," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 2(1), pages 1-19, February.
    13. Barry Reilly & Robert Witt, 2013. "Red cards, referee home bias and social pressure: evidence from English Premiership Soccer," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(7), pages 710-714, May.
    14. Babatunde Buraimo & Rob Simmons & Marek Maciaszczyk, 2012. "Favoritism And Referee Bias In European Soccer: Evidence From The Spanish League And The Uefa Champions League," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(3), pages 329-343, July.
    15. 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.
    16. Peter Dawson, 2014. "Refereeing and infringement of the rules," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 24, pages 401-418, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Karol Kempa & Hannes Rusch, 2019. "Dissent, sabotage, and leader behaviour in contests: Evidence from European football," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(5), pages 500-514, July.
    18. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Sarah Jewell & Carl Singleton, 2023. "Can Awareness Reduce (and Reverse) Identity-driven Bias in Judgement? Evidence from International Cricket," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2023-10, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    19. Hlasny, V. & Kolaric, S., 2015. "Catch Me If You Can - Referee–Team Relationships and Disciplinary Cautions in Football," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 74994, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    20. Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2021. "Social pressure in the stadiums: Do agents change behavior without crowd support?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:liv:livedp:20189. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Rachel Slater (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mslivuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.