Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP6369
Authors: Joseph Price; Justin Wolfers
Abstract: The NBA provides an intriguing place to test for taste-based discrimination: referees and players are involved in repeated interactions in a high-pressure setting with referees making the type of split-second decisions that might allow implicit racial biases to manifest themselves. Moreover, the referees receive constant monitoring and feedback on their performance. (Commissioner Stern has claimed that NBA referees ?are the most ranked, rated, reviewed, statistically analyzed and mentored group of employees of any company in any place in the world.?) The essentially arbitrary assignment of refereeing crews to basketball games, and the number of repeated interactions allow us to convincingly test for own-race preferences. We find?even conditioning on player and referee fixed effects (and specific game fixed effects)?that more personal fouls are called against players when they are officiated by an opposite-race refereeing crew than when officiated by an own-race crew. These biases are sufficiently large that we find appreciable differences in whether predominantly black teams are more likely to win or lose, based on the racial composition of the refereeing crew.
Keywords: basketball; discrimination; evaluation; implicit discrimination; own race bias; race
JEL Codes: J15; J71; K42
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Racial bias influences the number of personal fouls called against NBA players (J15) | Number of personal fouls called against NBA players (Z22) |
| Racial composition of the refereeing crew affects the number of fouls called against players (J15) | Number of personal fouls called against NBA players (Z22) |
| Referees of the opposite race (J15) | Number of personal fouls called against NBA players (Z22) |
| Racial composition of the refereeing crew affects the overall likelihood of a team winning (Z22) | Overall likelihood of a team winning (Z20) |