We explore how government officials’ behavior varies with their ethnicity, gender, and political orientation. Specifically, we analyze criminal sentencing decisions in Texas state district courts using data on approximately half a million criminal cases from 2004 to 2013. We exploit randomized case assignments within counties and obtain precisely estimated effects of judges’ ethnicity, gender, and political orientation that are near zero, conditional on geographic factors. However, we find substantial cross-judge heterogeneity in sentencing. Exploiting a unique overlapping structure of Texas state district courts, we find no evidence that this heterogeneity is driven by judges pandering to voters.

中文翻译：

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法官的特征很重要吗？德克萨斯州州立法院的种族，性别和陪审制

我们探讨了政府官员的行为如何随其种族，性别和政治取向而变化。具体来说，我们使用2004年至2013年期间约50万例刑事案件的数据来分析德克萨斯州地方法院的刑事判决判决。我们利用县内的随机案件分配，并准确估算出法官的种族，性别和政治倾向所产生的影响。接近零，取决于地理因素。但是，我们发现判决中存在大量的交叉判断异质性。利用得克萨斯州地方法院独特的重叠结构，我们找不到证据表明这种异质性是由法官向选民游刃有余。