Favoritism of agents – The case of referees’ home bias

Matthias Sutter () and Martin Georg Kocher ()

Papers on Strategic Interaction from Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-mic
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Journal Article: Favoritism of agents - The case of referees' home bias (2004)
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