IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/obuest/v75y2013i1p136-156.html

Punishing the Foreigner: Implicit Discrimination in the Premier League Based on Oppositional Identity

Author

Listed:
  • Edoardo Gallo
  • Thomas Grund
  • J. James Reade

Abstract

We present the first empirical study to reveal the presence of implicit discrimination in a non-experimental setting. By using a large dataset of in-match data in the English Premier League, we show that white referees award significantly more yellow cards against non-white players of oppositional identity. We argue that this is the result of implicit discrimination by showing that this discriminatory behaviour (i) increases in how rushed the referee is before making a decision, and (ii) it increases in the level of ambiguity of the decision. The variation in (i) and (ii) cannot be explained by any form of conscious discrimination such as taste-based or statistical discrimination. Moreover, we show that oppositional identity players do not differ in their behaviour from other players along several dimensions related to aggressiveness and style of play providing further evidence that this is not statistical discrimination.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Edoardo Gallo & Thomas Grund & J. James Reade, 2013. "Punishing the Foreigner: Implicit Discrimination in the Premier League Based on Oppositional Identity," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(1), pages 136-156, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:obuest:v:75:y:2013:i:1:p:136-156
    DOI: j.1468-0084.2012.00725.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1468-0084.2012.00725.x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/j.1468-0084.2012.00725.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Principe, Francesco & van Ours, Jan C., 2022. "Racial bias in newspaper ratings of professional football players," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    2. Mauro Caselli & Paolo Falco & Babak Somekh, 2024. "Inside the NBA Bubble: how Black players performed better without fans," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(2), pages 1-20, June.
    3. David Neumark, 2018. "Experimental Research on Labor Market Discrimination," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 799-866, September.
    4. Jorge Tovar, 2020. "Performance, Diversity And National Identity Evidence From Association Football," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(2), pages 897-916, April.
    5. Kenneth Colombe & Alex Krumer & Rosa Lavelle-Hill & Tim Pawlowski, 2025. "Racial bias, colorism, and overcorrection," Papers 2508.10585, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.
    6. 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).
    7. Mauro Caselli & Paolo Falco & Gianpiero Mattera, 2023. "When the Stadium Goes Silent: How Crowds Affect the Performance of Discriminated Groups," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 431-451.
    8. 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.
    9. Rhett Brymer & Ryan M. Rodenberg & Huimiao Zheng & Tim R. Holcomb, 2021. "College Football Referee Bias and Sports Betting Impact," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 91-106, January.
    10. Giacomo De Luca & Jeroen Schokkaert & Johan Swinnen, 2015. "Cultural Differences, Assimilation, and Behavior," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(5), pages 508-530, June.
    11. Vincenzo Carrieri & Francesco Principe & Michele Raitano, 2018. "What makes you ‘super-rich’? New evidence from an analysis of football players’ wages," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 950-973.
    12. Faltings, Richard & Krumer, Alex & Lechner, Michael, 2019. "Rot-Jaune-Verde. Language and Favoritism: Evidence from Swiss Soccer," Economics Working Paper Series 1915, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    13. Vladimir Hlasny & Sascha Kolaric, 2017. "Catch Me If You Can," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(6), pages 560-591, August.
    14. James Reade, 2014. "Detecting corruption in football," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 25, pages 419-446, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. 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.
    16. repec:lic:licosd:29711 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Barry Reilly, 2014. "Labour market discrimination," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 15, pages 238-258, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Varela-Quintana, Carlos & Sánchez, Luis Carlos & del Corral, Julio, 2025. "The effect of social pressure when judging favorites and underdogs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    19. John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), 2014. "Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14821, August.
    20. 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.
    21. Jeffrey Chu & Saralees Nadarajah & Emmanuel Afuecheta & Stephen Chan & Ying Xu, 2014. "A statistical study of racism in English football," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(5), pages 2915-2937, September.
    22. Paul Gift & Ryan M. Rodenberg, 2014. "Napoleon Complex," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 15(5), pages 541-558, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    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:bla:obuest:v:75:y:2013:i:1:p:136-156. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.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.