CORNELIA

This study evaluates the impact of judges’ gender on jury trial outcomes in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The identification strategy is based on conditional random assignment of judges to cases. Specifically, I take advantage of the compulsory judges’ rotation imposed by the North Carolina Constitution. The results indicate that the presence of a female judge increases of 9.64–13.50 percentage points the probability of having at least one guilty verdict from the jury and of 9.5%–13.45% increase in the proportion of guilty verdicts expressed by the jury. Additionally, I perform a series of robustness and heterogeneity checks. I also investigate the potential mechanisms driving the results, exploring the influence of the jury selection process and women’s attitudes toward the courts and sentencing.  

This article evaluates the impact of jurors’ political affiliations on trial verdicts in North Carolina. The research design relies on the day-to-day random variation in the composition of jury pools. The results indicate that if there is one additional independent juror in the pool, the percentage of guilty verdicts decreases by 2.93 percent and the conviction rate decreases by 2.85 percentage points. The impact of Democratic jurors is negative but not statistically significant. I also evaluate possible political discrimination in patterns of removing jurors. Democratic jurors are 3.7 percentage points more likely to be removed from a seated jury. The results for independent jurors are positive but not statistically significant. I implement heterogeneity checks and robustness checks. I also use potential jurors’ political affiliations as an instrument for the political affiliations of seated jurors to replicate the analysis and obtain similar results.  

This paper investigates the influence of mayors’ gender on corruption scandals and investigations in Italy. Utilising a novel dataset, I apply a regression discontinuity design to mixed-gender close elections. The results indicate that mayors’ gender does not exhibit a statistically significant impact on the occurrence of corruption scandals or investigations at the local level.