Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees

2010/11/01 by J. Price, Joe Price, J. Wolfers +1 · 532 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Engineering · Mathematics · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Aeronautics #Affect (linguistics) #Applied psychology #Communication #Crew #Engineering #Gender studies #Mathematics #Outcome (game theory) #Psychology #Race (biology) #Social psychology #Sociology #Sport and Mega-Event Impacts #Sports Analytics and Performance #Sports, Gender, and Society #White (mutation)

paper · doi:10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1859

published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics 125(4), 1859-1887 (Oxford University Press)

openalex publication_date 2010/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The NBA provides an intriguing place to assess discrimination: referees and players are involved in repeated interactions in a high-pressure setting, with referees making split-second decisions that might allow implicit racial biases to become evident. We find that more personal fouls are awarded against players when they are officiated by an opposite-race officiating crew than when they are officiated by an own-race refereeing crew. These biases are sufficiently large so that they affect the outcome of an appreciable number of games. Our results do not distinguish whether the bias stems from the actions of white or black referees.

Citations

• Favoritism Under Social Pressure

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