In soccer, the stoppage time is a discrete decision by the referee and multiple studies provide support for additional stoppage time at the end of games if the home team is trailing ( Sutter & Kocher, 2004 Garicano et al., 2005 Scoppa, 2008). Referees let their desire for social approval impact their decision making and account for at least some of the home court advantage ( Moskowitz & Wertheim, 2011). Home bias is presumably the most often analyzed type of bias in referee decision making. Previous work on referee bias concentrates on statistical differences in frequencies of decisions. Yet, there is room for subjective interpretation of situations and a chance for biased decision making. Referees have the task to evaluate in game situations impartially and make decisions within a very short period of time. Section 4 summarizes the results and provides a short discussion.
Section 3 describes the league assessment data for foul calls as well as estimation results for potential referee biases. The next section presents a review of the literature on referee biases. Previous investigations relied on statistical frequency of calls and devoted peculiarities to biased decision making, potentially mixing biased decision making with actual differences in behavior by the players or teams. Given that player characteristics like origin or star status are common knowledge, it opens the possibility to devote biased decision making by referees to these player specifics. This has the advantage of a very precise measurement of calls that can be broken down to the individual player committing a foul. For the first time, differences in the assessment of game situations by the employer (NBA) and employees (referees) are compared on a call-by-call basis. This paper presents a novel approach in analyzing discrepancies between actual calls and the judgment of these foul situations by the league. The literature on referee biases report favoritism towards home teams, players of the referees’ ethnicity, losing teams, and others. Given the literature on referee bias in sports, impartial decision making by referees should not be taken for granted. What remains is a potential trade-off for the referees, who face contradicting expectations from their employer, fans, and third parties, each with individual interest in the game outcome. Hence, financial incentives by the NBA aim at unbiased game calling by the referees. Here, leagues evaluate the performance by their referees to tie chances for reappointment and promotion to the proper and impartial calling of games. To lessen favoritism, leagues have various instruments to implement unbiased decision making, where the most powerful and presumably most costly tool is a monitoring system to supervise referees. Both the Donaghy case and the Hoyzer case resulted in criminal proceedings, evidencing the overlap between referee bias and potential legal issues that may result. In most recent years, cases of bribing made the press, like the 2007 NBA betting scandal surrounding former referee Tim Donaghy or the 2005 Bundesliga soccer scandal centered on former referee Robert Hoyzer. Social payoffs in form of home fans applauding for calls in their teams’ favor can serve as another kind of non-monetary reward. 1 These biases of judgment by the referee can stem from personal preferences towards certain players or teams. They evaluate in game situations subjectively and are potentially prone to biases that are not in line with the league’s interest. Referees in the National Basketball Association (NBA) are hired by the league to judge games impartially.
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