The Labour Market of Associate Football Referees: Open Issues and Methodological Notes

Abstract

This paper reviews the sports economics literature that analyses the role of referees in professional asociate football. Despite the increasing interest surrounding professional football players, less attention has been devoted to aspects characterizing the role and the labour market of referees. In particular, while the main body of the literature is primarly focused in assessing how social pressure from spectators affects the behaviour of officials during the match, issues as how referees are allocated to matchs, how their performance can be measured and if their pay is equal to their productivity are totally unexplored. This paper tries to start filling this gap by discussing some open issues and by presenting some methodological notes for the finding and analysis of suitable individual data.

Keywords: home advantage, monopsonistic exploitation, referee, sports performance

JEL Classification: J24, L83, M52