They were robbed! Scoring by the middlemost to attenuate biased judging in boxing

Stuart Baumann () and Carl Singleton

No em-dp2024-01, Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading

Abstract: Boxing has a long-standing problem with biased judging, impacting both professional and Olympic bouts. ''Robberies'', where boxers are widely seen as being denied rightful victories, threaten to drive fans and athletes away from the sport. To tackle this problem, we propose a minimalist adjustment in how boxing is scored: the winner would be decided by the majority of round-by-round victories according to the judges, rather than relying on the judges' overall bout scores. This approach, rooted in social choice theory and utilising majority rule and middlemost aggregation functions, creates a coordination problem for partisan judges and attenuates their influence. Our model analysis and simulations demonstrate the potential to significantly decrease the likelihood of a partisan judge swaying the result of a bout.

Keywords: Judgement Bias; Contests; Sports Economics; Pugilism; Scoring Rules (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 L83 Z20 Z28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2024-01-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
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Working Paper: They were robbed! Scoring by the middlemost to attenuate biased judging in boxing (2024)
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