Daniel Chen (Toulouse School of Economics; Harvard Radcliffe Fellow)

The Prejudices of Economic Ideology: The Exacerbation of Racial and Gender Inequalities by Economics Training for Judges

This paper investigates whether judges inclined toward economic rationality contribute to racial and gender disparities in sentencing. Using over 600,000 district court cases linked to judge and defendant identities, we estimate the causal effects of randomly assigning an economic-oriented judge. We identify such judges via their choice to voluntarily participate in the controversial Manne economics training program––an intensive course attended by almost half of federal judges between 1976 and 1999. The judges who attended the Manne training program are found to award 8% longer sentences for defendants belonging to a racialized minority group and 4% shorter sentences for female defendants. They were also found to be associated with 3.1% increase and 1.5% decrease in offense charge level for racialized and female defendants, respectively.