TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bryson, Alex
AU  - Dolton, Peter
AU  - Reade, J. James
AU  - Schreyer, Dominik
AU  - Singleton, Carl
        TI  - Experimental Effects of an Absent Crowd on Performances and Refereeing Decisions during COVID-19
        PY  - 2020/Aug/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 13578
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp13578
        AB  - The Covid-19 pandemic has induced worldwide natural experiments on the effects of crowds. We exploit one of these experiments currently taking place over several countries in almost identical settings: professional football matches played behind closed doors. We find large and statistically significant effects on the number of yellow cards issued by referees. Without a crowd, fewer cards were awarded to the away teams, reducing home advantage. These results have implications for the influence of social pressure and crowds on the neutrality of refereeing decisions.
        KW  - referee bias
KW  - natural experiments
KW  - home advantage
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - Coronavirus
KW  - attendance
KW  - social pressure
        ER  -