Hello, just a reminder that the seminar is tomorrow, Friday, December 4th, please see below:

 

“Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles” joint with N. Mocan

 

Speaker

Ozkan Eren
Louisiana State University

 

Seminar sponsored by:

The Department of Economics, University of Manitoba

Manitoba RDC

 

 

Friday, December 4th , 2015

2:30 – 4:00 PM

307 Tier Building

University of Manitoba

For more information call:  204-474-9207

 

 

All are welcome to attend. Here is the abstract for the paper:

 

Using 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 disposition (sentence) lengths assigned by judges during the work week following the game. Unexpected wins, or losses that were expected to be close contests ex-ante, have no effect. The impacts of emotional shocks are asymmetrically borne by black defendants. Similarly, sentencing decisions following an important game, and juveniles who have committed felony offenses are impacted. These results provide evidence of expectation-based reference point behavior/loss aversion among a uniformly highly-educated group of individuals (judges), with decisions involving high stakes (sentence lengths). They also point to the existence of a subtle and previously-unnoticed capricious application of sentencing.

 

Thank you,

 

 

Gwen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gwendolyn Band

Office Assistant

Department of Economics

Room 501 Fletcher Argue Building

University of Manitoba R3T 5V5

Ph: (204) 474-6239

Gwendolyn.Band@umanitoba.ca