TY  - JOUR
AU  - Garicano,Luis
AU  - Palacios,Ignacio
AU  - Prendergast,Canice
TI  - Favoritism Under Social Pressure
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8376
PY  - 2001
Y2  - July 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8376
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8376.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Luis Garicano
Departments of Management and Economics and
Centre for Economic Performance
London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom
E-Mail: garicano@lse.ac.uk

Canice Prendergast
Graduate School of Business
The University of Chicago
1101 E. 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-9159
Fax: 773/702-2699
E-Mail: canice.prendergast@ChicagoBooth.edu
AB  - This paper provides empirical evidence of favoritism by agents, where that favoritism is generated by social pressure.  To do so, we explore the behavior of professional soccer referees. Referees have discretion over the addition of extra time at the end of a soccer game (called injury time), to compensate for lost time due to unusual stoppages.  We test for systematic bias shown by Spanish referees in favor of home teams.  We show that referees systematically favor home teams by shortening close games where the home team is ahead, and lengthening close games where the home team is behind.  They show no such bias for games that are not close.  We further show that when the rewards for winning games increase, referees change their bias accordingly. We also identify that the mechanism through which bias operates is the referees' desire to satisfy the crowd, by documenting how the size and composition of the crowd affect referee favoritism.
ER  -