In a pre-registered 2 × 2 × 2 factorial between-subject randomized lab experiment with 61 federal judges, we test if the law influences judicial decisions, if it does so more under a rule than under a standard, and how its influence compares to that of legally irrelevant sympathies. Participating judges received realistic materials and a relatively long period of time (50 min) to decide an auto accident case. We find at best weak evidence that the law matters or that rules constrain more than standards, and no evidence of a sympathy effect. (JEL K00, K13, K40, K41)
{"title":"Law Matters—Less Than We Thought","authors":"Daniel Klerman, Holger Spamann","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewac008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewac008","url":null,"abstract":"In a pre-registered 2 × 2 × 2 factorial between-subject randomized lab experiment with 61 federal judges, we test if the law influences judicial decisions, if it does so more under a rule than under a standard, and how its influence compares to that of legally irrelevant sympathies. Participating judges received realistic materials and a relatively long period of time (50 min) to decide an auto accident case. We find at best weak evidence that the law matters or that rules constrain more than standards, and no evidence of a sympathy effect. (JEL K00, K13, K40, K41)","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"59 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Voters are frequently ill-equipped to monitor politicians’ actions. Politicians are expected to implement projects, whose benefits sometimes partially accrue to interest groups (IGs) and not entirely to voters. IGs thus have an incentive to affect which projects politicians implement by providing implementation subsidies to lower the cost of policymaking that politicians incur. This article shows how these considerations interact in a two-period political agency model with moral hazard and adverse selection. I study how the involvement of IGs in the policymaking process can affect voters’ welfare and show why voters might rationally not perfectly monitor politicians in the presence of IGs that might capture projects’ benefits and affect policymaking. (JEL D72, D73, D83)
{"title":"Political Agency and Implementation Subsidies with Imperfect Monitoring","authors":"Benjamin Blumenthal","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewac011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewac011","url":null,"abstract":"Voters are frequently ill-equipped to monitor politicians’ actions. Politicians are expected to implement projects, whose benefits sometimes partially accrue to interest groups (IGs) and not entirely to voters. IGs thus have an incentive to affect which projects politicians implement by providing implementation subsidies to lower the cost of policymaking that politicians incur. This article shows how these considerations interact in a two-period political agency model with moral hazard and adverse selection. I study how the involvement of IGs in the policymaking process can affect voters’ welfare and show why voters might rationally not perfectly monitor politicians in the presence of IGs that might capture projects’ benefits and affect policymaking. (JEL D72, D73, D83)","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"59 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Judicial ideology in court has attracted the attention of political scientists and legal economists. The question we address here is the extent to which ideological stability impacts the law. We consider a model where a court has two judicial ideological inclinations, majority and minority. However, they may change their relative influence over time. We show that, while both sides have a preferred legal policy and want their standard to become law, the two groups may compromise on not changing the standard, thus maintaining the status quo, because of majority uncertainty in the future. One important implication from our article is that less certainty concerning the future (in terms of majority and minority ideology) could actually make the law more stable in the present (since the standard is unchanged). In addition, we prove that moderate standards are more likely to endure the passage of time when compared to extreme standards.
{"title":"How Does Court Stability Affect Legal Stability?","authors":"Álvaro Bustos, Nuno Garoupa","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewac010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewac010","url":null,"abstract":"Judicial ideology in court has attracted the attention of political scientists and legal economists. The question we address here is the extent to which ideological stability impacts the law. We consider a model where a court has two judicial ideological inclinations, majority and minority. However, they may change their relative influence over time. We show that, while both sides have a preferred legal policy and want their standard to become law, the two groups may compromise on not changing the standard, thus maintaining the status quo, because of majority uncertainty in the future. One important implication from our article is that less certainty concerning the future (in terms of majority and minority ideology) could actually make the law more stable in the present (since the standard is unchanged). In addition, we prove that moderate standards are more likely to endure the passage of time when compared to extreme standards.","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"59 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Formal attribution provides a means of recognizing scientific contributions as well as allocating scientific credit. This article examines the processes by which attribution arises and its interaction with market assessments of the relative contributions of members of scientific teams and communities—a topic of interest for the organizational economics of science and in understanding scientific labor markets. We demonstrate that a pioneer or senior scientist’s decision to co-author with a follower or junior scientist depends critically on market attributions as well as the timing of the co-authoring decision. This results in multiple equilibrium outcomes each with different implications for expected quality of research projects. However, we demonstrate that the Pareto efficient organizational regime is for the follower researcher to be granted co-authorship contingent on their own performance without any earlier pre-commitment to formal attribution. We then compare this with the alternative for the pioneer of publishing their contribution and being rewarded through citations. While in some equilibria (especially where co-authoring commitments are possible) there is no advantage to interim publication, in others this can increase expected research quality. (JEL O31; O36)
{"title":"Markets for Scientific Attribution","authors":"Joshua S Gans, Fiona Murray","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewac007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewac007","url":null,"abstract":"Formal attribution provides a means of recognizing scientific contributions as well as allocating scientific credit. This article examines the processes by which attribution arises and its interaction with market assessments of the relative contributions of members of scientific teams and communities—a topic of interest for the organizational economics of science and in understanding scientific labor markets. We demonstrate that a pioneer or senior scientist’s decision to co-author with a follower or junior scientist depends critically on market attributions as well as the timing of the co-authoring decision. This results in multiple equilibrium outcomes each with different implications for expected quality of research projects. However, we demonstrate that the Pareto efficient organizational regime is for the follower researcher to be granted co-authorship contingent on their own performance without any earlier pre-commitment to formal attribution. We then compare this with the alternative for the pioneer of publishing their contribution and being rewarded through citations. While in some equilibria (especially where co-authoring commitments are possible) there is no advantage to interim publication, in others this can increase expected research quality. (JEL O31; O36)","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"61 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
An agent can perform a job in several ways, which we call tasks. Choosing agents’ tasks is the prerogative of management within firms, and of agents themselves if they are entrepreneurs. While agents’ comparative advantage at different tasks is unknown, it can be learned by observing their performance. However, tasks that generate more information could lead to lower short-term profits. Hence, firms will allocate workers to more informative tasks only if agents cannot easily move to other firms. When, instead, workers can easily move to other firms, agents may prefer to become entrepreneurs and acquire task discretion, even if their short-term payoff is lower than employees. Our model generates novel predictions with respect to, for example, how the wage dynamics of agents who switch between entrepreneurship and employment are affected by labor and contracting frictions. (JEL D83, J24, J62, J63, L26, M13).
{"title":"Task Discretion, Labor-market Frictions, and Entrepreneurship","authors":"Andrea Canidio, Patrick Legros","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewab030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewab030","url":null,"abstract":"An agent can perform a job in several ways, which we call tasks. Choosing agents’ tasks is the prerogative of management within firms, and of agents themselves if they are entrepreneurs. While agents’ comparative advantage at different tasks is unknown, it can be learned by observing their performance. However, tasks that generate more information could lead to lower short-term profits. Hence, firms will allocate workers to more informative tasks only if agents cannot easily move to other firms. When, instead, workers can easily move to other firms, agents may prefer to become entrepreneurs and acquire task discretion, even if their short-term payoff is lower than employees. Our model generates novel predictions with respect to, for example, how the wage dynamics of agents who switch between entrepreneurship and employment are affected by labor and contracting frictions. (JEL D83, J24, J62, J63, L26, M13).","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"58 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pamela J Clouser McCann, Charles R Shipan, Yuhua Wang
When Congress writes and passes statutes, it can include detailed provisions designating how judicial review of agency actions will operate. Yet despite their importance, empirical research has suffered from a lack of a systematic measure or assessment of these review provisions. In this project, we create a new measure of exposure to judicial review by hand-coding judicial review provisions in the text of significant legislation from 1947 to 2016. We identify five categories of review provisions, including language that describes the reviewability of agency decisions, time limits for petitioning courts, the scope of review, court venue, and standing. Utilizing these attributes, we construct latent indexes of exposure to the judiciary, including law-specific and agency-specific versions of these indexes. We then examine the validity of these measures of agency exposure to judicial review by assessing their covariation with litigation, discretion, and independence. Our data create possibilities for future research on how Congress can strategically attempt to influence other branches as well as insight into interactions among the branches in a separation-of-powers system.
{"title":"Measuring the Legislative Design of Judicial Review of Agency Actions","authors":"Pamela J Clouser McCann, Charles R Shipan, Yuhua Wang","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewab031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewab031","url":null,"abstract":"When Congress writes and passes statutes, it can include detailed provisions designating how judicial review of agency actions will operate. Yet despite their importance, empirical research has suffered from a lack of a systematic measure or assessment of these review provisions. In this project, we create a new measure of exposure to judicial review by hand-coding judicial review provisions in the text of significant legislation from 1947 to 2016. We identify five categories of review provisions, including language that describes the reviewability of agency decisions, time limits for petitioning courts, the scope of review, court venue, and standing. Utilizing these attributes, we construct latent indexes of exposure to the judiciary, including law-specific and agency-specific versions of these indexes. We then examine the validity of these measures of agency exposure to judicial review by assessing their covariation with litigation, discretion, and independence. Our data create possibilities for future research on how Congress can strategically attempt to influence other branches as well as insight into interactions among the branches in a separation-of-powers system.","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"61 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Using the National Compensation Survey between 2004 and 2017, we document four stylized facts and quantify cyclical heterogeneity among performance pay (PP) and fixed wage (FW) jobs. First, there is substantial dispersion in the incidence of PP, even within the same occupation; hourly compensation growth in PP jobs has been nearly three-times as large as that in FW jobs; the share of PP is increasing in employer size; the provision of PP is largely a firm-level decision. Second, we find that hourly compensation growth among PP (FW) jobs increases (decreases) in response to state employment growth. Furthermore, FW jobs respond primarily by adjusting the extensive margin of employment. Our estimates are identified off of comparisons of similar jobs within the same establishment over time. These business cycle dynamics are consistent with models that feature heterogeneity in organizational practices, allowing firms to adjust to uncertainty over the business cycle under flexibility in compensation contracts. (JEL J21, J22, J31, E32, M55).
{"title":"On the Cyclicality of Real Wages and Employment: New Evidence and Stylized Facts from Performance Pay and Fixed Wage Jobs","authors":"Christos A Makridis, Maury Gittleman","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewab032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewab032","url":null,"abstract":"Using the National Compensation Survey between 2004 and 2017, we document four stylized facts and quantify cyclical heterogeneity among performance pay (PP) and fixed wage (FW) jobs. First, there is substantial dispersion in the incidence of PP, even within the same occupation; hourly compensation growth in PP jobs has been nearly three-times as large as that in FW jobs; the share of PP is increasing in employer size; the provision of PP is largely a firm-level decision. Second, we find that hourly compensation growth among PP (FW) jobs increases (decreases) in response to state employment growth. Furthermore, FW jobs respond primarily by adjusting the extensive margin of employment. Our estimates are identified off of comparisons of similar jobs within the same establishment over time. These business cycle dynamics are consistent with models that feature heterogeneity in organizational practices, allowing firms to adjust to uncertainty over the business cycle under flexibility in compensation contracts. (JEL J21, J22, J31, E32, M55).","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"57 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, we consider whether the representation of historically disenfranchised minorities in government can reduce violence suffered by these groups. To answer this question, we examine the impact of political parties that represent India’s marginalized Scheduled Castes (SCs). We address the endogenous selection of minority-favoring parties using state-level variation in aggregations of close election outcomes. We find that a 10 percentage-point increase in representation reduces the minority murder rate by 3 percentage points. An analysis of channels suggests that politicians respond to minority constituents by increasing police effort in responding to the victimization of SCs, which may have the effect of deterring future offenders. Moreover, improvements in self-reported attitudes toward government institutions suggest that our results are not the product of negative reporting bias in government crime statistics (JEL: J15, D72, K14).
{"title":"How Representation Reduces Minority Criminal Victimization: Evidence from Scheduled Castes in India","authors":"Abhay Aneja, S K Ritadhi","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewab028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewab028","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we consider whether the representation of historically disenfranchised minorities in government can reduce violence suffered by these groups. To answer this question, we examine the impact of political parties that represent India’s marginalized Scheduled Castes (SCs). We address the endogenous selection of minority-favoring parties using state-level variation in aggregations of close election outcomes. We find that a 10 percentage-point increase in representation reduces the minority murder rate by 3 percentage points. An analysis of channels suggests that politicians respond to minority constituents by increasing police effort in responding to the victimization of SCs, which may have the effect of deterring future offenders. Moreover, improvements in self-reported attitudes toward government institutions suggest that our results are not the product of negative reporting bias in government crime statistics (JEL: J15, D72, K14).","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"59 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mitchell E Zamoff, Brad N Greenwood, Gordon Burtch
We present a multi-year study of the rollout of Body-Worn Cameras (BWCs) to the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Our study adds to the prior body of work by clarifying some of the discord within it, particularly with respect to large urban police departments. We estimate the effect of BWC deployment on precinct volumes of citizen stops, arrests, complaints against officers, and use-of-force incidents. Results indicate that BWCs drive significant increases in stops and decreases in arrests and citizen complaints. We observe no effect on use of force. We also document heterogeneity in affected stops and complaints. Our findings speak to three potential benefits of BWCs in urban law enforcement: an increase in legitimate stops made by police; a decrease in complaints alleging officers’ abuse of authority; and a reduction in arrests (which appears beneficial, regardless of whether this results from improved behavior among police or citizens).
{"title":"Who Watches the Watchmen: Evidence of the Effect of Body-Worn Cameras on New York City Policing","authors":"Mitchell E Zamoff, Brad N Greenwood, Gordon Burtch","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewab026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewab026","url":null,"abstract":"We present a multi-year study of the rollout of Body-Worn Cameras (BWCs) to the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Our study adds to the prior body of work by clarifying some of the discord within it, particularly with respect to large urban police departments. We estimate the effect of BWC deployment on precinct volumes of citizen stops, arrests, complaints against officers, and use-of-force incidents. Results indicate that BWCs drive significant increases in stops and decreases in arrests and citizen complaints. We observe no effect on use of force. We also document heterogeneity in affected stops and complaints. Our findings speak to three potential benefits of BWCs in urban law enforcement: an increase in legitimate stops made by police; a decrease in complaints alleging officers’ abuse of authority; and a reduction in arrests (which appears beneficial, regardless of whether this results from improved behavior among police or citizens).","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"55 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Firms sometimes have problems with their products or management systems: problems that can lead to catastrophic events. However, while workers in these firms are often aware of these problems, they sometimes fail to report them to their superiors. This paper examines workers’ incentives for concealing problems within an overlapping generations organization consisting of a subordinate and a manager. The results reveal that concealment exhibits strategic complementarity across different generations, which can lead to multiple equilibria. Further, imposing punishment and rewards on managers may paradoxically increase the motivation for concealment (JEL D23, D82, M51).
{"title":"Concealment as Responsibility Shifting in Overlapping Generations Organizations*","authors":"Tomoya Tajika","doi":"10.1093/jleo/ewab023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewab023","url":null,"abstract":"Firms sometimes have problems with their products or management systems: problems that can lead to catastrophic events. However, while workers in these firms are often aware of these problems, they sometimes fail to report them to their superiors. This paper examines workers’ incentives for concealing problems within an overlapping generations organization consisting of a subordinate and a manager. The results reveal that concealment exhibits strategic complementarity across different generations, which can lead to multiple equilibria. Further, imposing punishment and rewards on managers may paradoxically increase the motivation for concealment (JEL D23, D82, M51).","PeriodicalId":501404,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization","volume":"61 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138521574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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