domestic violence and football

David Card (Berkeley) and Gordon Dahl (Rochester) study family violence during football season, and show that (from the abstract):

Controlling for location and time fixed effects, weather factors, the pre-game point spread, and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses by the home team (losses in games that the home team was predicted to win by more than 3 points) lead to an 8 percent increase in police reports of at-home male-on-female intimate partner violence. There is no corresponding effect on female-on-male violence... We also find that unexpected losses in highly salient or frustrating games have a 50% to 100% larger impact on rates of family violence.

This is interesting, but isn't a big surprise. If Bubba beats his wife when he is frustrated, and if Bubba gets frustrated when his team loses in an upset, then an upset loss results in a beaten up wife. Card and Dahl argue that their evidence supports the hypothesis among analysts that domestic violence tends to result from a loss of control, rather than a more rational choice in an effort to shape "intra-family incentives."

Download it here, or here.