Favoritism of Agents - the Case of Referees' Home Bias

Sutter, Matthias; Kocher, Martin G.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.333341

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Favoritism of Agents - the Case of Referees' Home Bias

Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems, Papers on Strategic Interaction No. 28-2002

29 Pages Posted: 27 Mar 2003

See all articles by Matthias Sutter

Matthias Sutter

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Martin G. Kocher

University of Vienna

Date Written: August 2002

Abstract

We study the behavior of football (soccer) referees in the German Bundesliga. Referees are requested to act as impartial agents. However, they may be tempted to allocate benefits and rewards in a biased way. Agency theory has long neglected this form of malfeasance of economic agents, but has rather concentrated on agents exerting suboptimal effort levels. Favoritism or biased behavior of referees can be investigated by examining their decisions on awarding penalties or extra time at the end of a football match. We can confirm a systematic home bias of referees.

Keywords: agency theory, favoritism, social pressure, referee, German Bundesliga

JEL Classification: D21, D73

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Sutter, Matthias and Kocher, Martin G., Favoritism of Agents - the Case of Referees' Home Bias (August 2002). Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems, Papers on Strategic Interaction No. 28-2002, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=333341 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.333341