2024/08/24 by Daniel L. Chen · 4 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Affect (linguistics) #Communication #Economics #Ideology #Judicial and Constitutional Studies #Law #Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems #Legal and Constitutional Studies #Political science #Politics #Positive economics #Presidential election #Presidential system #Priming (agriculture) #Psychology #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104835
published in European Economic Review 169, 104835 (Elsevier BV)
openalex publication_date 2024/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Politicians’ behavioral changes as an election nears have typically been attributed to the incentive effects of an election. I document that behavioral changes can occur even for unelected judges, using data from 1925 to 2002 on U.S. appellate judges, who are appointed for life. Exploiting monthly campaign ads in judges’ states of residence, dissents increase with campaign advertisements in states where judges reside. Elections can explain 23 % of all dissents. I rule out a number of incentive-based explanations. Topic of dissents, replication in concurrences (disagreement about reasoning), and placebo checks using milestones of case development support a transient priming mechanism. If elite U.S. judges are in fact susceptible to priming via the partisan nature of electoral cycles, then highly trained individuals may be susceptible to other forms of priming regardless of their professional commitments to be unbiased.