Date: 2018
Type: Thesis
Three essays in applied microeconomics
Florence : European University Institute, 2018, EUI, ECO, PhD Thesis
KURMANGALIYEVA, Madina, Three essays in applied microeconomics, Florence : European University Institute, 2018, EUI, ECO, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/59844
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This thesis consists of three essays in applied microeconomics. In Chapter 1, I estimate the effect that wealth and power have on criminal justice outcomes by exploiting the random matching of drivers to pedestrians in vehicle-pedestrian crashes. If justice is impartial, we should observe the same share of rich offenders both for poor and rich victims, conditional on location and time. Rich victims act as a control group to estimate the proportion of missing rich offenders whose victims are less powerful. Using data from Russia, I find that its justice system is not impartial and the disparity in outcomes is even more obvious for graver crashes. Chapter 2 studies how race and gender affect the probability of receiving help in the United States. Refining the approach of Chapter 1, we estimate whether drivers who hit a pedestrian decide to stay or flee depending on the race or gender of their victim. We match crashes that happened under similar circumstances and in proximity to each other in the U.S. We find that drivers generally do not discriminate pedestrians by gender, but do by race. Drivers stay less often for blacks than for whites, especially in the white-majority neighborhoods. Chapter 3 studies how the power imbalance between victims and defendants affects negotiations in Victim-Defendant settlements in criminal justice. We develop a perfect-information game where the victim and the defendant must exert costly effort for the case to reach prosecution, but they can settle before the contest. Improving the defendant’s bargaining position reduces the settlement amount, yet even affordable settlements can fail to happen. Using the data on criminal traffic offenses in Russia, we structurally estimate the model and recover individual preferences and fighting abilities. We find that the relation between the defendant’s wealth and the expected settlement offer is inversely U-shaped.
Table of Contents:
-- 1 Missing rich offenders: traffic accidents and the impartiality of justice -- 2 Who do we help? evidence from car crashes and drivers’ decisions to stay or flee -- 3 Take me to court: explaining victim-defendant settlements under asymmetric bargaining positions
Additional information:
Defence date: 23 November 2018; Examining Board: Prof. Andrea Ichino, EUI, Supervisor Prof. Andrea Mattozzi, EUI Prof. Roberto Galbiati, Sciences Po, Prof. Ben Vollaard, Tilburg University
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/59844
Full-text via DOI: 10.2870/763803
Series/Number: EUI; ECO; PhD Thesis
Publisher: European University Institute
LC Subject Heading: Microeconomics
Sponsorship and Funder information:
Russian Science Foundation
Preceding version: http://hdl.handle.net/1814/59993
Version: Chapter 1 'Missing rich offenders : traffic accidents and the impartiality of justice' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Missing rich offenders : traffic accidents and the impartiality of justice' (2018) in the journal 'Review of law & economics'