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Rot-Jaune-Verde. Language and Favoritism: Evidence from Swiss Soccer

Author

Listed:
  • Faltings, Richard
  • Krumer, Alex
  • Lechner, Michael
Abstract
Switzerland is a multi-lingual developed country that provides an attractive stage to test ingroup favoritism that is driven by linguistic differences. To that end, we utilize data from soccer games in the top two Swiss divisions between the seasons 2005/06 and 2017/18. In these games, the referee was from the same linguistic area with one team, whereas the other team was from a different linguistic area. Using very rich data on teams’ and games’ characteristics, our causal forest-based estimator reveals that referees assign significantly more penalties in the form of yellow and red cards to teams from a different linguistic area. This form of ingroup favoritism is large enough so that it is likely to affect the outcome of the game. As evidence, we find that the difference in points in favor of the home team increases significantly when a referee is from the same linguistic area.

Suggested Citation

  • Faltings, Richard & Krumer, Alex & Lechner, Michael, 2019. "Rot-Jaune-Verde. Language and Favoritism: Evidence from Swiss Soccer," Economics Working Paper Series 1915, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:econwp:2019:15
    as

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    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/econwp/EWP-1915.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    3. Alex Krumer & Felix Otto & Tim Pawlowski, 2022. "Nationalistic bias among international experts: evidence from professional ski jumping," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(1), pages 278-300, January.
    4. Richard Faltings & Alex Krumer & Michael Lechner, 2023. "Rot‐Jaune‐Verde: On linguistic bias of referees in Swiss soccer," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(3), pages 380-406, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Favoritism; discrimination; soccer; language;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D00 - Microeconomics - - General - - - General
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • L00 - Industrial Organization - - General - - - General
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
    • Z20 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - General

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