Flutterby™! : College football & sentencing

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics vol. 10, no. 3, July 2018: Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles, Ozkan Eren, Naci Mocan

Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a U.S. state between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks associated with unexpected outcomes of football games played by a prominent college team in the state. We find that unexpected losses increase sentence lengths assigned by judges during the week following the game. Unexpected wins, or losses that were expected to be close contests ex ante have no impact. The effects of these emotional shocks are asymmetrically borne by black defendants. The impact of upset losses on sentence lengths is larger for defendants if their cases are handled by judges who received their bachelor's degrees from the university with which the football team is affiliated.

DOI: 10.1257/app.20160390