Essays on Identity-Based Bias and Discrimination
This dissertation empirically examines identity-based disparities and discrimination in the context of criminal justice and science. It focuses on gender and racial bias within the U.S. criminal justice system and ethnicity-based disparities in international scientific collaboration due to the rising U.S.-China tensions. Across these contexts, the dissertation documents the evidence for discrimination and its consequences. Chapter 1 examines whether gender match between prosecutors and defendants influences prosecutorial charging decisions and case outcomes. Prior research has largely focused on same-gender bias among judges, juries, and federal prosecutors. This study extends the analysis to county prosecutors who have broader discretion. Using administrative data with random case assignment, I find strong relative opposite-gender favoritism in property crimes. In property crimes, relative to the mean, female prosecutors are 32.2% less likely to drop a case and 13.5% less likely to drop a charge when handling same-gender defendants compared to male prosecutors. These biases carry through to case outcomes, increasing overall convictions by 6% relative to the mean. I also find weak evidence of same-gender favoritism in person crime charging decisions, but the bias does not carry through to sentencing outcomes. These results are similar in magnitude to previous studies on federal-level convictions. Altogether, the findings highlight same-gender bias in prosecutorial decisions at the state level, with effects differing by crime type. Chapter 2 investigates how the racial match of prosecutors, defendants, and victims affects charging decisions and case outcomes. Adding to the existing research that documents same-race favoritism between prosecutors and defendants, this study contributes by examining the mitigating effect of victim race. Leveraging the random assignment of prosecutors in a large district attorney’s office, I find evidence of both same-defendant-race favoritism and added same-victim-race favoritism, with the latter being more influential. Compared to non-White prosecutors, White prosecutors are 7%-20% more likely to dismiss charges, relative to the mean, when the defendant is of the same race but the victim is not. However, when both the defendant and victim share the prosecutor’s race, White prosecutors are 15%-23% less likely to dismiss charges. These biases significantly impact case outcomes in person crimes, with a 17% decrease in convictions for same-race defendants but a 29% increase for same-race victims. The results not only provide evidence of same-race favoritism among prosecutors but also highlight that prosecutors tend to favor victims of their own racial group more strongly than defendants. Chapter 3 examines the impact of rising U.S.-China tensions on three main dimensions of science: STEM trainee mobility between the two countries, scientific collaboration between U.S. and Chinese researchers, and researcher productivity. Using a difference-in-differences approach with CV and publication data, ethnically Chinese graduate students became 15% less likely to enroll in U.S. Ph.D. programs and 4% less likely to remain in the U.S. post-graduation after 2016. In both instances, these students were more likely to move to a non-U.S. anglophone country instead. Chinese citations of U.S. research declined sharply, while U.S. citations of Chinese research remained stable. Although reduced Chinese engagement with U.S. science has not yet affected the average productivity of China-based researchers, anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S. has decreased the research productivity of ethnically Chinese scientists in the U.S. by 2%-6% and increased their likelihood of ceasing publication by 7%. The results strongly suggest a “chilling effect” on ethnically Chinese scholars in the U.S., impacting both the country’s ability to attract and retain talent and the productivity of its ethnically Chinese scientists.
Criminal Justice, Discrimination, Gender, Race, Scientific Production, Economics
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