This study considers the influences on agents’ decisions in an international context. Using data from five seasons of European cup football matches it is found that referees favour home teams when awarding yellow and red cards. Previous research on referee decisions in national leagues has identified social pressure as a key reason for favouritism. While social pressure is also found to be an important influence in this study, the international setting shows that nationality is another important influence on the decision-making of referees. In considering principal-agent relationships account needs to be taken not only of how agents (referees) decide under social pressure but also of how national identity shapes agents’ decision making.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Centre for Econometric Research in its series NCER Working Paper Series with number
46.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Recreation; Tourism
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: