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Political Campaigning, and Racial Discrimination in Arrests for Drugs

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Barilari

    (Trinity College Dublin)

  • Diego Zambiasi

    (Newcastle University)

Abstract

In this paper we show that political campaigning can influence the behavior of law enforcement officers. We follow monthly arrests for 1383 police agencies in 40 American States from January 1984 to December 1990. During these years the Presidents of the United States developed a strong rhetoric against drug abuse. The main target of the presidential rhetoric was crack cocaine, a drug that the media associated with Blacks. We implement both a difference in differences and a reduced-form-Bartik-type approach to test if exposure to the presidential rhetoric affected the behavior of law enforcement officers. We generate a novel measure of the intensity of the presidential rhetoric against drug abuse by running a topic modelling analysis of all the public papers of Presidents Reagan and Bush. We find that arrests for crack cocaine of Blacks increased more in counties more exposed to the presidential rhetoric against drug abuse --even when accounting for state specific policies and baseline differences in county characteristics--, while we find no effect for Whites. We find qualitatively similar results when considering the effect of Reagan's political rallies.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Barilari & Diego Zambiasi, 2023. "Political Campaigning, and Racial Discrimination in Arrests for Drugs," Trinity Economics Papers tep0223, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0223
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    File URL: https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2023/TEP0223.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crackcocaine; Politicalcampaigning; Racialdiscrimination;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • P00 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - General - - - General

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