IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v215y2022ics0165176522001203.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Errors and monotonicity in judicial decision-making

Author

Listed:
  • Bhuller, Manudeep
  • Sigstad, Henrik

Abstract

Recent literature raises concerns about monotonicity conditions required to interpret IV estimates under heterogeneous effects. A prominent example involves random decision-maker IV designs where decision-makers exhibit systematic differences in both preferences and skills. We develop tests of monotonicity in the context of judicial decision-making using proxies of judicial errors based on appeals and reversals of trial decisions from Norwegian court records. Our tests fail to reject average monotonicity. This suggests that differences in stringencies across judges are not sufficiently driven by skills to raise concerns about the validity of the random judge IV literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhuller, Manudeep & Sigstad, Henrik, 2022. "Errors and monotonicity in judicial decision-making," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:215:y:2022:i:c:s0165176522001203
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110486
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176522001203
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110486?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manudeep Bhuller & Gordon B. Dahl & Katrine V. Løken & Magne Mogstad, 2020. "Incarceration, Recidivism, and Employment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(4), pages 1269-1324.
    2. Brigham Frandsen & Lars Lefgren & Emily Leslie, 2023. "Judging Judge Fixed Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(1), pages 253-277, January.
    3. Samuel Norris & Matthew Pecenco & Jeffrey Weaver, 2021. "The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(9), pages 2926-2963, September.
    4. Will Dobbie & Jacob Goldin & Crystal S. Yang, 2018. "The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 201-240, February.
    5. Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2013. "Criminal Recidivism after Prison and Electronic Monitoring," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(1), pages 28-73.
    6. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2021. "Juvenile Punishment, High School Graduation, and Adult Crime: Evidence from Idiosyncratic Judge Harshness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(1), pages 34-47, March.
    7. Anna Aizer & Joseph J. Doyle, 2015. "Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(2), pages 759-803.
    8. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    9. Jeffrey R. Kling, 2006. "Incarceration Length, Employment, and Earnings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 863-876, June.
    10. Edward Vytlacil, 2002. "Independence, Monotonicity, and Latent Index Models: An Equivalence Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 331-341, January.
    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. Alexeev, Sergey & Weatherburn, Don, 2022. "Fines for illicit drug use do not prevent future crime: evidence from randomly assigned judges," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 555-575.

    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. Johannes W. Ligtenberg & Tiemen Woutersen, 2024. "Multidimensional clustering in judge designs," Papers 2406.09473, arXiv.org.
    2. Carolina Arteaga, 2021. "Parental Incarceration and Children's Educational Attainment," Working Papers tecipa-703, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    3. Robert Collinson & John Eric Humphries & Nicholas Mader & Davin Reed & Daniel Tannenbaum & Winnie van Dijk, 2024. "Eviction and Poverty in American Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(1), pages 57-120.
    4. William Arbour & Steeve Marchand, 2022. "Parole, Recidivism, and the Role of Supervised Transition," Working Papers tecipa-725, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    5. Bhuller, Manudeep & Sigstad, Henrik, 2024. "2SLS with multiple treatments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 242(1).
    6. Bhuller, Manudeep & Khoury, Laura & Løken, Katrine V., 2021. "Prison, Mental Health and Family Spillovers," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 19/2021, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    7. Grenet, Julien & Grönqvist, Hans & Niknami, Susan, 2024. "The effects of electronic monitoring on offenders and their families," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    8. Brigham Frandsen & Lars Lefgren & Emily Leslie, 2023. "Judging Judge Fixed Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(1), pages 253-277, January.
    9. Ivan A Canay & Magne Mogstad & Jack Mount, 2024. "On the Use of Outcome Tests for Detecting Bias in Decision Making," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(4), pages 2135-2167.
    10. Sofia Amaral & Gordon B. Dahl & Victoria Endl-Geyer & Timo Hener & Helmut Rainer, 2023. "Deterrence or Backlash? Arrests and the Dynamics of Domestic Violence," NBER Working Papers 30855, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jenny Williams & Don Weatherburn, 2022. "Can Electronic Monitoring Reduce Reoffending?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(2), pages 232-245, May.
    12. John Eric Humphries & Nicholas Mader & Ahmed Daniel Tannenbaum & Winnie van Dijk, 2019. "Does Eviction Cause Poverty" Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Cook County, IL," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2186, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    13. Manudeep Bhuller & Gordon B. Dahl & Katrine V. Løken & Magne Mogstad, 2020. "Incarceration, Recidivism, and Employment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(4), pages 1269-1324.
    14. Amanda Y. Agan & Jennifer L. Doleac & Anna Harvey, 2021. "Misdemeanor Prosecution," NBER Working Papers 28600, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Christian Dippel & Dustin Frye & Bryan Leonard, 2020. "Property Rights without Transfer Rights: A Study of Indian Land Allotment," NBER Working Papers 27479, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2021. "Juvenile Punishment, High School Graduation, and Adult Crime: Evidence from Idiosyncratic Judge Harshness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(1), pages 34-47, March.
    17. Alexeev, Sergey & Weatherburn, Don, 2022. "Fines for illicit drug use do not prevent future crime: evidence from randomly assigned judges," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 555-575.
    18. Michelle Yin & Garima Siwach & Dajun Lin, 2023. "Vocational Rehabilitation Services and Labor Market Outcomes for Transition‐Age Youth with Disabilities in Maine," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(1), pages 166-197, January.
    19. Randi Hjalmarsson & Stephen Machin & Paolo Pinotti, 2024. "Crime and the labor market," CEP Discussion Papers dp2044, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    20. Christian Dippel & Michael Poyker, 2023. "Do Private Prisons Affect Criminal Sentencing?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(3), pages 511-534.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monotonicity; Errors; Random decision-maker design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • C36 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation

    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:eee:ecolet:v:215:y:2022:i:c:s0165176522001203. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.