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Unpolluted decisions: Air quality and judicial outcomes in China

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  • Hou, Yue
  • Wang, Peichun

Abstract

Judicial outcomes should not be influenced by factors that have no bearing on legal decisions, but studies have shown that judges can be affected by extraneous variables such as weather, sports events, and food consumption. Employing the universe of drug offense court decisions in five major Chinese cities between 2014 and 2015, we study whether air pollution and temperature affect sentencing outcomes in China, where air pollution is severe and judges have considerable discretion in sentencing drug cases. We find that Chinese criminal judges are not at all affected by pollution or temperature changes. One standard deviation change in air pollutant PM2.5 level may change the sentence length by no more than 2% of its standard deviation with over 95% probability. Further analysis shows that our results are robust to a variety of specifications and a battery of robustness checks. Our findings suggest that judicial rulings are not always swayed by extraneous factors, and we discuss conditions under which public officials are more likely to be shielded from these non-legal factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Hou, Yue & Wang, Peichun, 2020. "Unpolluted decisions: Air quality and judicial outcomes in China," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:194:y:2020:i:c:s0165176520302342
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109369
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Anthony Heyes & Matthew Neidell & Soodeh Saberian, 2016. "The Effect of Air Pollution on Investor Behavior: Evidence from the S&P 500," NBER Working Papers 22753, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    3. Evans, Sally & Siminski, Peter, 2020. "The Effect of Outside Temperature on Criminal Court Sentencing Decisions," IZA Discussion Papers 13010, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Tom Chang & Joshua Graff Zivin & Tal Gross & Matthew Neidell, 2016. "Particulate Pollution and the Productivity of Pear Packers," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 141-169, August.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Marianne Bertrand & Robin Burgess & Arunish Chawla & Guo Xu, 2020. "The Glittering Prizes: Career Incentives and Bureaucrat Performance," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(2), pages 626-655.
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    Cited by:

    1. Marc Deschamps & Bruno Jeandidier & Julie Mansuy, 2021. "Weather and appeal court decisions in divorce cases in France," Working Papers 2021-02, CRESE.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Law and economics; Air pollution; Political institution; China;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption

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