Three essays on race and political economy

All men are created equal, but resources are unevenly distributed across all men. In American history, the color of one's skin has played a salient role in skewing resources towards some racial groups versus others. This dissertation examines the role of race and racism in specific areas of our political system today.;The first chapter explores whether or not trial judges undermine constitutional rights by engaging in taste-based discrimination. The research design employs an empirical test that is motivated by a theoretical model of judicial sentencing. The model is useful because it allows for both taste-based and statistical discrimination and in doing so, generates an empirical prediction that distinguishes between the two. The model predicts that if judges engage in taste-based discrimination, then the rank-order of judge-specific incarceration rates will depend on the felon's race. Both descriptive and statistical evidence show that the ordering of judicial incarceration rates depends on felon's racial group in 3 out of the 4 largest judicial districts in Kansas. These results imply that in each of these 3 districts, at least one judge violates equal protection by engaging in taste-based discrimination against some racial group. These results are neither explained by election year effects nor the possibility that judges have heterogeneous sentencing preferences towards certain types of crime.;The second chapter asks whether judges might engage in discriminatory behavior not because of their own racial preferences but out of a desire to win re-election. The possibility is well-grounded in the literature. There is extensive evidence that a judge's reputation suffers when she appears "soft on crime'', that crime is a highly racialized policy issue, and that political candidates, including judges, actively engage in racialized campaigns. The open question is to what extent "tough on crime'' is campaign code for "tough on black crime'' and whether this language actually translates into discriminatory sentencing. I find evidence of a rise in sentencing severity that is not evenly distributed across racial groups. I find that incarceration rates rise by 2.2 to 2.6 percentage points in the election year, but only for criminal defendants who are black. These effects are more pronounced in districts where the median voter is expected to have higher levels of predicted prejudice.;The third chapter examines whether the selection of our elected officials is influenced by the race of the political candidate. This chapter shifts focus away from the judiciary and uses voting results from congressional, gubernatorial, and presidential elections. This is partly motivated by the lack of variation in race across trial judges in the state of Kansas. We also construct county-level measures of racial prejudice using data from the Implicit Associations Test (IAT). This data allows us to examine whether or not more prejudiced counties are more likely deviate from their long run support for the Democratic Party when either the Democratic or Republican candidate is black. The evidence shows that racial prejudice predicts voting behavior. Highly prejudiced counties are less likely to vote for the Democratic candidate when that candidate is black. These results are not explained by measurement error, differential turnout, or residential segregation.;On the whole, the findings of this dissertation suggest that judges do engage in taste-based discrimination, electoral pressure can motivate discriminatory behavior, and that a political candidate's race may play an important role in the electorate's voting behavior.