University of Liverpool From the SelectedWorks of Dr Babatunde Buraimo October 20, 2010 Men in Black: The impact of new contracts on football referees performances Babatunde Buraimo, University of Central Lancashire Alex Bryson Rob Simmons, Lancaster University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/babatunde_buraimo/6/
Men in Black: The impact of new contracts on football referees performances A L E X B R Y S O N L O N D O N S C H O O L O F E C O N O M I C S B A B A T U N D E B U R A I M O U N I V E R S I T Y O F C E N T R A L L A N C A S H I R E R O B S I M M O N S L A N C A S T E R U N I V E R S I T Y
Outline of Presentation Motivation, background and context Sports officials in the spotlight Literature highlights Referees labour market Theoretical analysis Method, data and modelling Results Concluding remarks and policy implications
M O T I V A T I O N, B A C K G R O U N D A N D C O N T E X T & S P O R T S O F F I C I A L S I N T H E S P O T L I G H T
Motivation, background and context Overwhelming amount of data on decision-making and behaviour Salary contracts have their own incentive effects; not convincingly explored very much in empirical literature Misspecification in previous studies Discourse between reality and perception Improve decision-making
Our contribution Identify productivity effects of switch from match fee to salary Exploit panel data on individual We observe referees over time: pre- and post- the switch so can account for fixed unobservable worker attributes We observe workers entering and leaving profession, so can examine the extent to which productivity is driven by referee sorting
Referees in the Spotlight
FIFA World Cup final: Holland versus Spain
Racist officials? Foul calls by referee crew in NBA
L I T E R A T U R E H I G H L I G H T S & R E F E R E E S L A B O U R M A R K E T
Literature: some highlights Nevill, A., Balmer, N. and Williams, A. (2002) The influence of crowd noise and experience upon refereeing decisions in football, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 3, 261 272. Laboratory experiment with crowd noise 15.5% fewer fouls against the home team compared with those watching in silence Garicano, L., Palacios-Huerta, I. and Prendergast, C. (2005) Favoritism under social pressure, Review of Economics and Statistics, 87, 208 216. When match is not close, no bias Injury time allocated in close match, bias in favour of home team Dohmen, T. (2008) The influence of social forces: evidence from the behavior of football referees, Economic Inquiry, 46, 411 424. Home teams are systematically awarding more stoppage time in close matches in which they are behind. Home teams are favoured in decisions to award goals and penalty kicks
Literature: some highlights Rickman, N. and Witt, R. (2008) Favouritism and financial incentives: a natural experiment, Economica, 75, 296-309 Length of injury time in close matches Referees exercised favouritism prior to professionalism but not afterwards Buraimo, B., Forrest, D. and Simmons R. (2010) The 12th man?: refereeing bias in English and German soccer. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 173, 431 449 Within-game events (minute-by-minute analysis) Home team favouritism induced by crowd pressure Favourite and underdog status reveals size of home bias
Referees labour market Prior to 2001-2 season all paid match fee From 2001-2 Premiership referees paid a salary plus match fee Salaried referees required to undertake regular off-the-job training All Premiership and Championship referees eligible if promoted to the Select group from National group Managed by Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL)
Salaries and Tier 1 match fees after 2001 Income from salaries much higher than match fee and real value increases over time Season Salary Match fee 2001/02 33,000 600 2005/06 50,000 230 2007/08 53,000 270 2008/09 57,000 350 Current earnings of around 65,000
Number of referees : pre- and contract periods Season Tier 1 only Tier 2 only Tiers 1 and 2 All referees Referees on salaried contracts 1997-98 19 49 68 1998-99 17 53 1 71 1999-00 50 21 71 2000-01 3 52 23 78 2001-02 1 51 24 76 24 2002-03 1 51 22 74 25 2003-04 1 55 21 77 21 2004-05 50 23 73 19 2005-06 40 22 62 16 2006-07 47 20 67 17 2007-08 49 18 67 18 2008-09 1 51 18 70 19
Mean no. games per season by tier and contract Tier 1 Tier 2 Season Contract Non-contract Contract Non-contract 1997-98 20.00 10.98 1998-99 21.11 10.22 1999-00 18.10 7.76 2000-01 14.62 7.36 2001-02 15.79 1.00 6.58 7.73 2002-03 16.52 0.00 5.88 8.39 2003-04 18.05 1.00 5.52 7.93 2004-05 19.42 2.75 5.00 8.46 2005-06 22.94 2.17 6.50 9.74 2006-07 22.06 1.67 7.12 8.62 2007-08 21.11 0.00 7.33 8.57 2008-09 20.00 0.00 6.17 8.65
T H E O R E T I C A L A N A L Y S I S & M E T H O D, D A T A A N D M O D E L L I N G
Can salary elicit improved performance? Mechanisms Career concerns (incentive) Salary contracts reviewed after 2 seasons (later 1) Efficiency wage effect (higher wages) Quality effect through training Worker sorting
Measuring and modelling performance Poor performance readily observable and sanctions immediate Dropped Reputational damage Decisions influenced by fan pressure Controls for local rivals, crowd size Performance comprises 3 elements Training Preventative effort Sanctions (or cards) Cost of preventative effort and training vary by type of contract
0 Percent 10 20 30 Performance scores by select and national groups 0 1 0 5 10 0 5 10 Referee score Graphs by Referee on Select Group (Data source: The Times)
Impact of sanctions on performance (n = 1305) Performance scores span just 2001-2 to 2003-4 (and not 1997-9 to 2008-9) Good referees show fewer cards (Frick et al., 2008) performance f ( sanctions, preventative, training ) performance 0 yellow 1 dismissal β 2 n season γ m referee performance 6.16 0.15yellow ( 7.87) 0.311dismissal β ( 3.83) n season γ m referee Given relationship between performance and cards Yellow cards and dismissal are good proxies
Data Data comprises 11,169 of 11,184 matches played in Tiers 1 and 2 between 1997-8 and 2008-9 All 168 referees officiating those games 9 only tier 1 114 only tier 2 45 both tier 1 and tier 2 All Tier 1 games officiated by salaried referees from 2001-2 with a few exceptions But 15% of Tier 2 games officiated by salaried referees
Methodological approach Natural experiment Difference-in-difference FAPL Match fee FAPL Salaried TIER 1 x POST2000-1 Championship Match fee Championship Match fee Up until 2000-01 2001-02 onwards
Model Unit of observation: football match Dependent variable: cards per match Empirical model of performance Sanctions = g(tier, attendance, pre and contract periods, derby, score, team performances, period within season, individual referee effect, season, TIER 1 x POST2000-1) Control and FOCUS variables Regression analysis with TIER 1 POST2000-1 capturing introduction of salaries
R E S U L T S & C O N C L U S I O N S A N D P O L I C Y I M P L I C A T I O N S
Regression analysis with referee effects for number of yellow cards per game
Regression analysis with referee effects for number of dismissals per game
Interpretation Impact of salary is a reduction in cards Robust to various model specifications Sanctions being substituted with preventative effort Theoretical and mathematical justification, as well as empirical modelling Career concerns Quality effect through training
Conclusions and policy implications Worker performance improves with salary Impact due to Non-random allocation of contracts Worker sorting Remainder due to salary contracts Career concerns, training or income Reallocate resources from... to referees Efficiency improvements
References Buraimo, B., Forrest, D. and Simmons R. (2010) The 12th man?: refereeing bias in English and German soccer. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 173, 431 449 Dohmen, T. (2008) The influence of social forces: evidence from the behavior of football referees, Economic Inquiry, 46, 411 424. Garicano, L., Palacios-Huerta, I. and Prendergast, C. (2005) Favoritism under social pressure, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 87, 208 216. Nevill, A., Balmer, N. and Williams, A. (2002) The influence of crowd noise and experience upon refereeing decisions in football, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 3, 261 272. Rickman, N. and Witt, R. (2008) Favouritism and financial incentives: a natural experiment, Economica, 75, 296-309
Men in Black T H A N K Y O U C O M M E N T S & Q U E S T I O N S