Love thy Neighbor, Love thy Kin: Strategy and Bias in the Eurovision Song Contest

Sofronis Clerides and Thanasis Stengos

No 605, Working Papers from University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance

Abstract: The annual Eurovision Song Contest provides a setting where Europeans can express their sentiments about other countries without regard to political sensitivities. Analyzing voting data from the 25 contests between 1981-2005, we find strong evidence for the existence of clusters of countries that systematically exchange votes regardless of the quality of their entries. Cultural, geographic, economic and political factors are important determinants of point exchanges. Factors such as order of appearance, language and gender are also important. There is also a substantial host country effect. We find some evidence of reciprocity but no evidence of strategic voting.

Keywords: Eurovision; social networks; reciprocity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Love thy Neighbour, Love Thy Kin: Strategy and Bias in the Eurovision Song Contest (2012)
Working Paper: Love thy Neighbour, Love thy Kin: Strategy and Bias in the Eurovision Song Contest (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gue:guelph:2006-5

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stephen Kosempel ().