Corruption and Referee Bias in Football : The Case of Calciopoli

Based on the Calciopoli scandal, which uncovered widespread corruption in Italian football, this paper quantifies the effect of referee bias on the performance of football teams. The impartiality of referees is often distorted by external factors which exert some emotional pressure in order to influence their decisions. On the other hand, corrupt referees consciously and deliberately try to distort the results of the sport contest, in order to favor the corrupting teams. Building on the implications of a model where performance in a sport contest depends on both effort and bribing, our results highlight the different effects of these two forms of bias, and help to shed light on several aspects of the corruption scandal