The Judge, the Politician, and the Press: Newspaper Coverage and Criminal Sentencing across Electoral Systems

作者：Claire Lim, James M. Snyder, David Strömberg · 发表于：American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 年份：2015 · DOI：10.1257/app.20140111 · 被引用次数：136 · 研究领域：Media Influence and Politics、Judicial and Constitutional Studies、Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems

We study how media environments interact with political institutions that structure the accountability of public officials. Specifically, we quantify media influence on the behavior of US state court judges. We analyze around 1.5 million criminal sentencing decisions from 1986 to 2006 and new data on the newspaper coverage of 9,828 trial court judges. Since newspaper coverage is endogenous, we use the match between newspaper markets and judicial districts to identify effects. We find that newspaper coverage significantly increases sentence length by nonpartisan elected judges for violent crimes. For partisan elected and appointed judges, there are no significant effects. (JEL D72, H76, K41, L82)