Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/216322 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 13010
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Climate change has stimulated growing interest in the influence of temperature on cognition, mood and decision making. This paper is the first investigation of the impact of temperature on the outcomes of criminal court cases. It is motivated by Heyes and Saberian (2019, AEJ: Applied Economics), who found strong effects of temperature on judges' decisions in immigration cases, drawing on 207,000 cases. We apply similar methods to analyse 2.8 million criminal court cases in the Australian state of New South Wales from 1994 to 2019. Most of the estimates are precise zeros. We conclude that outcomes of criminal court cases (which are far more prevalent globally than immigration cases) are not influenced by fluctuations in temperature, an unsurprising but reassuring result.
Subjects: 
criminal courts
temperature
climate
decision making
JEL: 
K14
K41
Q54
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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