Criminals on the Field: A Study of College Football

Radek Janhuba () and Kristyna Cechova
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Kristyna Cechova: Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, Smetanovo nabrezi 6, 111 01 Prague 1, Czech Republic

No 2017/13, Working Papers IES from Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies

Abstract: Economists have found mixed evidence on what happens when the number of police increases. On the one hand, more law enforcers means higher probability of detecting a crime, which is known as monitoring effect. On the other hand, criminals incorporate this increase into their decision making process and thus may commit less crimes, constituting the deterrence effect. This study analyzes the effects of an increase in the number of on-field college football officials, taking players as potential criminals and officials as law enforcers. Analyzing a novel play by play dataset from two seasons of college football, we report evidence of a monitoring effect being present in the overall dataset. This effect is mainly driven by offensive penalties which are called in the area of jurisdiction of the added official. The decomposition of the effect provides a limited evidence for the presence of the deterrence effect in the case of penalties with severe punishment and committed by teams with moderately high ability.

Keywords: Football; Official; Crime; Deterrence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H43 K14 Z29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2017-07, Revised 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-spo
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Working Paper: Criminals on the Field: A Study of College Football (2017)
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