A Test of Racial Bias in Capital Sentencing

Alberto F. Alesina, Eliana La Ferrara

NBER Working Paper No. 16981
Issued in April 2011

---- Acknowledgements -----

We thank Shamena Anwar, Abhijit Banerjee, Katherine Barnes, Francesco Corielli, Richard Dieter, John Donohue, Jerey Fagan, James MacKinnon, Nicola Persico, Stephen Ross, Andrei Shleifer and seminar participants at CIAR, Duke, Warwick, Royal Holloway, IIES Stockholm University, Queen's University, University of Connecticut, NBER Political Economy Conference, CEPR Public Policy Conference and Villa La Pietra Conference on New Directions in Applied Microeconomics for helpful comments. Giulia La Mattina, Lucia Rizzica, Erika Deserranno, Mariagiovanna Di Feo, Damiano Briguglio, Giovanni Rizzo, Matteo Fiorini and Marta Barazzetta provided excellent research assistance. This paper was written while Alesina was visiting IGIER Bocconi. He thanks this institution for hospitality. La Ferrara acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council grant ERC-2007-StG-208661. The usual disclaimer applies. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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