Papers
The second leg home advantage: Evidence from European football cup competitions
Journal of Sports Sciences
The home advantage is a widely acknowledged sporting phenomenon, especially in association football. Here, we examine the second leg home advantage, an effect that is discussed in the public domain but which has received very little scientific attention. The second leg home advantage effect occurs when on average teams are more likely to win a two-stage knock-out competition when they play at home in the second leg. That is, both teams have a home advantage but this advantage is significantly greater for the team that plays at home second. Examining data from three different European Cup football competitions spanning 51 years, we show that the second leg home advantage is a real phenomenon. The second leg home team has more than a 50% probability to qualify for the next round in the competition even after controlling for extra time
and team ability as possible alternative explanations. The second leg home advantage appears, however, to have decreased significantly over the past decade. Possible reasons for its existence and subsequent decline are presented.
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Last shall be first: A field study of biases in seuqential performance evaluation on the Idol series
Forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2009)
When performances are evaluated they are very often presented in a sequential order. Previous research suggests that the sequential presentation of alternatives may induce systematic biases in the way performances are evaluated. Such a phenomenon has been scarcely studied in economics. Using a large data set of performance evaluation in the Idol series (N=1522), this paper presents new evidence about the systematic biases in sequential evaluation of performances and the psychological phenomena at the origin of these biases.
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Alone against the crowd: Individual differences in referees' ability to cope under pressure.
Forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Psychology - 2009
This paper contributes to the recent debate about the role of referees in the home advantage phenomenon. Specifically, it aims to provide a convincing answer to the newly posed question of the existence of individual differences among referees in terms of home advantage (Boyko, Boyko, & Boyko, 2007; Johnston, 2008). Using multilevel modelling on a large and representative dataset we find that (1) the home advantage effect differs significantly among referees, and (2) this relationship is moderated by the size of the crowd. These new results suggest that a part of the home advantage is due to the effect of the crowd on the referees, and that some referees are more prone to be influenced by the crowd than others. This provides strong evidence to indicate that referees are a significant contributing factor to the home advantage. The implications of these findings are discussed both in terms of the relevant social psychological research, and with respect to the selection, assessment, and training of referees.
Stakes and Motivation in Tournaments: Playing When There is Nothing to Play for but Pride
Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy
Tournaments are an effective means of incentivising participants to ensure an optimal level of effort. However, situations can occur in tournaments where the final outcome of a given competitor does not depend on his/her future performance. Specifically, we study these specific situations in a data set of the group stages of European football club competitions from 1992 to 2009. We identify situations where teams are already sure to finish either first or last at the penultimate stage in the group. We show that such situations affect team performance in the last match, typically decreasing the performance of a team sure to finish first and increasing the performance of a team sure to finish last. The first finding is in line with the economic predictions yet provides interesting implications, namely that the schedule of the match order plays a significant role in the overall performance of the team. The second, counter-intuitive, finding is not well accommodated into the existing economics framework and thus we discuss two alternative explanations, one based on social pressure and the other on pride.
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