IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v58y2020i3p1450-1468.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bad News From The Front And From Above: Bombing Raids, Military Fatalities And The Death Penalty In Nazi Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Wayne Geerling
  • Gary Magee
  • Paul A. Raschky
  • Russell Smyth

Abstract

We examine how the decision‐making of political elites respond to an imminent external threat to the existence of the state in times of war. To do so, we exploit exogeneous variation in exposure to battle deaths and bombing raids to estimate the effect of variation in the intensity of war on the probability that individuals charged with treason and/or high treason in Nazi Germany received the death sentence. A doubling of the number of military fatalities as well as bombing raids in the same week in which a defendant was sentenced increased the likelihood of receiving the death penalty by about 10 percentage points. (JEL K14, N44)

Suggested Citation

  • Wayne Geerling & Gary Magee & Paul A. Raschky & Russell Smyth, 2020. "Bad News From The Front And From Above: Bombing Raids, Military Fatalities And The Death Penalty In Nazi Germany," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(3), pages 1450-1468, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:58:y:2020:i:3:p:1450-1468
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12876
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12876
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecin.12876?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Ferguson & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2008. "Betting on Hitler—The Value of Political Connections in Nazi Germany," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 101-137.
    2. Wayne Geerling & Gary Magee & Vinod Mishra & Russell Smyth, 2018. "Hitler's Judges: Ideological Commitment and the Death Penalty in Nazi Germany," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(614), pages 2414-2449, September.
    3. Claire S. H. Lim & James M. Snyder Jr. & David Strömberg Jr., 2015. "The Judge, the Politician, and the Press: Newspaper Coverage and Criminal Sentencing across Electoral Systems," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 103-135, October.
    4. Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel & Mutlu Yuksel, 2015. "The Long-Term Direct and External Effects of Jewish Expulsions in Nazi Germany," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 58-85, August.
    5. Fabian Waldinger, 2016. "Bombs, Brains, and Science: The Role of Human and Physical Capital for the Creation of Scientific Knowledge," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(5), pages 811-831, December.
    6. Shanker Satyanath & Nico Voigtländer & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2017. "Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 478-526.
    7. Wayne Geerling & Gary Magee, 2017. "Quantifying Resistance," Studies in Economic History, Springer, number 978-981-10-6008-3, June.
    8. David S. Abrams & Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2012. "Do Judges Vary in Their Treatment of Race?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 347-383.
    9. Gartner, Scott Sigmund, 2008. "The Multiple Effects of Casualties on Public Support for War: An Experimental Approach," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 102(1), pages 95-106, February.
    10. Mustard, David B, 2001. "Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities in Sentencing: Evidence from the U.S. Federal Courts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 285-314, April.
    11. Radha Iyengar, 2011. "Who's the Fairest in the Land? Analysis of Judge and Jury Death Penalty Decisions," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(3), pages 693-722.
    12. Anthony Heyes & Soodeh Saberian, 2019. "Temperature and Decisions: Evidence from 207,000 Court Cases," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 238-265, April.
    13. Moses Shayo & Asaf Zussman, 2011. "Judicial Ingroup Bias in the Shadow of Terrorism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1447-1484.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chodick, Gabriel & Goldstein, Yoav & Shurtz, Ity & Zeltzer, Dan, 2022. "Challenging Encounters and Within-Physician Practice Variability," IZA Discussion Papers 15441, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Geerling, Wayne & Magee, Gary & Raschky, Paul & Smyth, Russell, 2017. "Legally Irrelevant Factors in Judicial Decision-making: Battle Deaths and the Imposition of the Death Penalty in Nazi Germany," MPRA Paper 77159, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Peiyuan Li & Wei Li, 2024. "Wrongful convictions with Chinese characteristics," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(1), pages 143-163, January.
    3. Philippe, Arnaud, 2017. "Gender disparities in criminal justice," TSE Working Papers 17-762, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    4. Simone Bertoli & Morgane Laouenan & Jérôme Valette, 2022. "Border Apprehensions and Federal Sentencing of Hispanic Citizens in the United States," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03818735, HAL.
    5. Arnaud Philippe, 2020. "Gender Disparities in Sentencing," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 87(348), pages 1037-1077, October.
    6. Ash, Elliott & Asher, Sam & Bhowmick, Aditi & Bhupatiraju, Sandeep & Chen, Daniel L. & Devi, Tatanya & Goessmann, Christoph & Novosad, Paul & Siddiqi, Bilal, 2022. "Measuring Gender and Religious Bias in the Indian Judiciary," TSE Working Papers 22-1395, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    7. Samantha Bielen & Wim Marneffe & Naci H. Mocan, 2018. "Racial Bias and In-group Bias in Judicial Decisions: Evidence from Virtual Reality Courtrooms," NBER Working Papers 25355, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2018. "Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 171-205, July.
    9. Shumway, Clayson & Wilson, Riley, 2022. "Workplace disruptions, judge caseloads, and judge decisions: Evidence from SSA judicial corps retirements," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    10. Andre Assumpcao & Julio Trecenti, 2020. "Judicial Favoritism of Politicians: Evidence from Small Claims Court," Papers 2001.00889, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2020.
    11. Chen,Daniel Li & Graham,Jimmy & Ramos Maqueda,Manuel & Singh,Shashank - DIME3, 2022. "Do Judges Favor Their Own Ethnicity and Gender ? Evidence from Kenya," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9956, The World Bank.
    12. Johannes Buggle & Thierry Mayer & Seyhun Orcan Sakalli & Mathias Thoenig, 2023. "The Refugee’s Dilemma: Evidence from Jewish Migration out of Nazi Germany," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(2), pages 1273-1345.
    13. Becker, Sascha O. & Mukand, Sharun & Yotzov, Ivan, 2022. "Persecution, pogroms and genocide: A conceptual framework and new evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    14. Shamena Anwar & Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2019. "Politics in the Courtroom: Political Ideology and Jury Decision Making," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 834-875.
    15. Vadim Volkov, 2016. "Legal and Extralegal Origins of Sentencing Disparities: Evidence from Russia's Criminal Courts," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(4), pages 637-665, December.
    16. Stéphane Mechoulan & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2015. "Assessing Racial Disparities in Parole Release," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 39-74.
    17. Maja Adena & Ruben Enikolopov & Maria Petrova & Veronica Santarosa & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2015. "Radio and the Rise of The Nazis in Prewar Germany," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(4), pages 1885-1939.
    18. Briggs Depew & Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2017. "Judges, Juveniles, and In-Group Bias," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(2), pages 209-239.
    19. Samantha Bielen & Peter Grajzl, 2021. "Prosecution or Persecution? Extraneous Events and Prosecutorial Decisions," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(4), pages 765-800, December.
    20. Bindler, Anna & Hjalmarsson, Randi, 2016. "The Fall of Capital Punishment and the Rise of Prisons: How Punishment Severity Affects Jury Verdicts," Working Papers in Economics 674, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:58:y:2020:i:3:p:1450-1468. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.