The Wisdom of Crowds and Football Players - An Investigation of the Underdog Bias and the Valuation of Football Players in the English Premier League

In this thesis, I apply the effect of uninformative cues on collective judgements to the field of football. More specifically, I investigate whether the underdog bias is present in the crowds’ valuation of football players in the Premier League. I define underdogs based on the Human Development Index category in the player’s country of birth, which turns out to be unrelated to performance. Although more research is needed to support the findings, this thesis provides initial evidence for the presence of the underdog bias in the estimated market value of football players by the crowds. This shows that uninformative performance cues affect the way we value other people.