Publication cultures in economic, business and financial history: Comparing apples and oranges?

1.)Quantifying the heterogeneity of publication cultures in economic, business and financial history

 

by Eline Poelmans and Sandra Rousseau, Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, campus Brussels

 

Abstract

Researchers working in the interdisciplinary field of ‘economic, business and financial history’ come from at least two different disciplinary backgrounds, namely history and economics. These two backgrounds may lead to differences in research practices, as there are potentially other demands for tenure and promotion requirements. We performed a survey to assess whether there is heterogeneity in the submission and publication culture (i.e. one multi-faceted culture, or simply multiple cultures) between respondents working in an economics versus a history department. Among other things, we found differences in their motivation for publishing, the type of publications they aim for, and their journal selection strategies. Our results show that the department the respondents work at—irrespective of their disciplinary focus and background—determines most of their research and publication decisions. Hence working successfully in an interdisciplinary field or working in a department different from the main field of research requires researchers to learn the (in)formal rules and practices of an unfamiliar field.

 
Published on: Essays in Economic & Business History (2016) Volume XXXIV pp. 95-135.

URL: http://www.ebhsoc.org/journal/index.php/journal/issue/current

and

2.)Factors determining authors’ willingness to wait for editorial decisions from economic history journals

 

by Eline Poelmans and Sandra Rousseau, Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, campus Brussels

 

Abstract

In this contribution, we measure how long researchers are willing to wait (WTW) for an editorial decision on the acceptance or rejection of a submitted manuscript. This measure serves as a proxy for the expected value of a publication to a researcher in the field of economic, business and financial history. We analyze how this WTW measure varies with the characteristics of the submitting authors themselves. We distinguish the impact of personal characteristics (including age, gender and geographic location) as well as work-related characteristics (including research discipline, affiliation and academic position). To identify the factors determining economic history authors’ WTW for editorial decisions, we use a valuation technique known as stated choice experiments. Our results show that respondents found the standing of the journal to be at least as important as its ISI impact factor. Moreover, we find differences in publication culture between economic and history departments. Overall, researchers’ willingness to wait is influenced to a greater extent by the research discipline in which the respondents are active (history vs. economics), than by their personal characteristics (e.g. the education or the type of Ph.D. they obtained).

Published on: Scientometrics (2015) 102: pp. 1347–1374

DOI 10.1007/s11192-014-1469-2

URL https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276234589_Factors_determining_authors

Summarised by Eline Poelmans and Sandra Rousseau

Overview

When authors choose a journal to submit a manuscript, the submission process is influenced by several author and journal characteristics. Also time pressure is an influencing factor, since academic job offers, promotions and tenure decisions tend to be based on researchers’ publication and citation records. Hence, both journal editors and prospective authors want to reduce the time between the initial submission and the final editorial decision.

Moreover, within interdisciplinary fields – such as the field of ‘economic, business and financial history’, a field at the intersection of two major social sciences – there can be large differences in both research attitudes, skills, focus and practices depending on the different backgrounds of researchers (such as having a PhD in history or in economics) as well as varying requirements for tenure, promotion or funding in the different departments the researchers are working (such as the department of history versus that of economics) that can also influence an author’s submission and publication decisions.

 

In the first paper, the authors conducted a survey to investigate whether working in the interdisciplinary field ‘economic history’ implies an additional challenge to the researcher in this field compared to those working in a more homogeneous field. The authors used data in order to quantify this heterogeneity (or ‘duality’) of the publication culture in economic history by investigating the impact of the disciplinary focus of researchers’ doctoral dissertation and current affiliation (history, economics or other) on respondents’ submission and publication behavior: their preferred publication outlets, their reasons for publishing, and their journal selection strategies.

In the second paper, the authors assessed the impact of time constraints on the submitting author’s willingness to wait (WTW) for a publication in a journal with specific characteristics in the field of economic history and they analyzed whether and how this WTW measure varied with journal and personal characteristics. They studied the main effects of the different journal characteristics on the willingness-to-wait for a publication, as well as the interaction effects with the respondents’ characteristics to estimate the different values researchers attach to publications with particular characteristics in this field.

 

The first paper shows that the department the respondents work at determines most of their research and publication decisions. Hence, working in an interdisciplinary field such as economic history clearly comes at a cost: researchers with a PhD in one discipline who work in a department of another discipline may have to change their research and publication behavior significantly in order to obtain tenure or get promoted. These insights imply that it is inappropriate to use a strategy based on the conventions of a single discipline to evaluate researchers in a multidisciplinary field since it is unlikely that ‘one size fits all.’

 

The second paper found that respondents’ decisions on manuscript submission were dependent on specific journal characteristics, such as ISI impact factor and standing. Moreover, the respondents’ institution type with which they were affiliated (history versus economics) influenced the respondent’s willingness to wait to a greater extent than their personal characteristics (such as the type of Ph.D. they obtained).

 

Hence, as requirements with regard to tenure and promotion often differ between departments and disciplines, it is important to develop measurement methods to hire and evaluate researchers working in an interdisciplinary field that have obtained a PhD in one field (such as (economic) history) and end up in an economics department, and vice versa. In this respect it is important to develop and use multidisciplinary assessment strategies to evaluate the quality of researchers in a multidisciplinary field. For instance, it may be advisable to include researchers from both disciplinary backgrounds in selection committees.

Possibilities for future research

Obtaining a larger data set with more respondents can improve the paper. Moreover, checking whether (and making sure that) the dataset is representative for the discipline would be useful (e.g. the division male/female, the share of American, European, Asian, … researchers in this specific field, the share of people with a PhD in economics versus a PhD in history that work in the field of economic history, the division of permanent versus temporary contracts, etc…).

With regard to future research attaining more PhD students would be useful to see whether their research decisions are already formed during their PhD by the publication culture of the department they work at. It is also interesting to analyze whether there is a difference if the PhD student is conducting his PhD on an independent (governmental) scholarship.

A more in-depth analysis about how the researchers perceive the advantages and disadvantages of working in an interdisciplinary environment as well as measuring attitudes and opinions through multidimensional scales can improve insight into the challenges and rewards of performing interdisciplinary research. By identifying drivers and barriers to interdisciplinary research in the field of economic history – for instance by using the framework developed by Siedlok and Hibbert (2014) – advice for research institutions, funding agencies and policy makers could be formulated.

Moreover, the results of these papers only apply to researchers active in the field of economic history. Thus, it would be interesting for future research to investigate whether these findings could be generalized to other (interdisciplinary) fields, such as law and economics or environmental economics.

Stated choice experiments could, for instance, be used to investigate the relative importance of factors influencing the decision to collaborate with a particular type of researcher (gender, rank, national or international) or research institution. They could also help in identifying classes of researchers that show similar collaborative behavior. Moreover, choice experiments could help in analyzing decisions to fund particular projects or to hire particular researchers. Further, they could also be useful in comparing authors’ citation behavior: such as studying the relative importance of different articles’ characteristics (such as familiarity with the authors, standing of the journal, time of publication, content fit, innovativeness, etc.) in the decision to cite a particular source in a text. Finally, choice experiments can be used to analyze the editors’ decision in matching referees with submitted manuscripts, depending on characteristics, such as specialization, maturity and past experience with a particular referee.

Finally, the crisis of 2007 showed that the knowledge of historical facts could maybe not have prevented the crisis, but at least have made the banks more cautious in their decision making process. However, so far, interdisciplinary research – such as economic, financial and business history – is unfortunately still considered by the academic world as a ‘side business’, most often not really belonging to a department, but as a research field floating somewhere in between economics and history. As long as the demands for tenure and the promotion requirements in different departments differ, researchers will be guided in their motivation to work on certain topics by these external evaluation criteria, instead of by the interest of historical facts that need to be researched in order to learn lessons for the future.

Given the value of interdisciplinary research in tackling complex real-life problems, it is important to understand the dynamics of such interdisciplinary research fields. Thus it is interesting to study the formal and informal sets of rules that guide the selection of research topics, collaborations, funding decisions and publication behavior. Such empirical – and repeated – studies allow us to identify positive and negative trends and provide the opportunity to react in a timely manner so that interdisciplinary research is – and continues to be – rewarding for researchers.

 

Additional References

Siedlok, F. and Hibbert, P., 2014. The organization of interdisciplinary research: modes, drivers and barriers. International Journal of Management Reviews, 16(2), pp.194-210.

A Gift From Europe to the World: Globalization, Capitalist Expansionism and Professional Bicycle Road Racing

The History of Professional Road Cycling

by Jean-François Mignot

Abstract:

Why did cycling become professional as early as the late nineteenth century, while other sports (such as rugby) and other sport events (such as the Olympic Games) remained amateur until the 1980s? Why are the organizers of the most important bicycle races private companies, while in other sports such as soccer the main event organizer is a nonprofit organization? To what extent have bicycle races changed since the late nineteenth century? And how does cycling reflect long-term economic changes? The history of professional road cycling helps answer these questions and understand many related phenomena. This chapter provides a long-term, historical perspective on (1) professional road cycling’s economic agents, i.e., the public, race organizers, team sponsors and riders, and the relationships amongst them; (2) cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union; and (3) professional cycling’s final product, i.e., the show of bicycle races. More precisely, the chapter mostly focuses on the history of male professional road cycling in Western Europe since the late nineteenth century. It is founded on both an analysis of quantitative time series on the Grand Tours (and, to some extent, the classics) and a review of the existing literature on the history of professional cycling, whether economic history, institutional history, cultural history, or sport history.

URL: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01326719

Distributed by NEP-HIS on 2016-10-02

Revised by: Stefano Tijerina, Ph.D.

The professionalization and commercialization of sports illustrates the forces of capitalism in action, as its culture and institutional structures transition from the local to the global in response to the demands of the market and the increasing interdependence among multiple private and public stakeholders. In his brief history of professional road cycling Jean-François Mignot demonstrates how the sport is transformed throughout the twentieth century as it transitioned from amateur to professional. Mignot argues that the professionalization of this sport anticipated many other international sports because the forces of capitalism pressured the athletes to abandon their amateur status early on in order to secure an income.[1] His research reveals the early infiltration of the private sector within the culture of cycling in Europe, the institutional transformation of the sport, the market’s impact on the institutional structure of bicycle racing, and its integration into the global system. Ultimately, his historic analysis allows the possibility of drawing parallels with the processes of transformation experienced by other goods, commodities, and services that adapted to the inevitable pressures of the expansion of capitalism.

Jean-François Mignot’s research shows that the idea of organizing road race competitions around the commonly used bicycle emerged from the desire of newspapers across Europe to sell more newspapers through this new and creative marketing scheme. Newspapers in France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy began organizing races on public roads in the late 1800s to show the public that human and bicycles could cover vast distances across flat and mountainous terrain. As indicated by Mignot, early races of 25 to 70 hours in duration covering 250 to 400 kilometers became epic sporting events of duration and perseverance among extraordinary European athletes.[2] The media’s construct of these epic figures created the thirst for road cycling, but it was the fact that the spectator standing on the side of the road was only able to watch the spectacle for a few seconds and depended on the print media to recreate the rest of the race, that pushed newspapers into the sponsorship business. It was this interdependent relation between spectator, athlete, and newspapers that inspired the print media industry to organize these road races, hoping that races would become magnets for advertisement sales. As indicated by Mignot, “cycling fans demanded more information” and “pictures of the race,” and the race organizing newspapers were interested in supplying the demand by covering the races in detailed form as they watched circulations increase.[3]

The one-day races or “Classics” and the three-week “Grand Tours” became the backbone of professional road racing in Europe. By the 1930s newspapers had monopolized the sponsorship of the events, while fans filled the roadways accompanied by publicity caravans “that distributed product samples to spectators.”[4] Meanwhile bicycle and tire companies became the sponsors of teams, as individual riders were replaced by teams that worked on behalf of the stars that made up the top cycling teams in Europe.[5]

In the early stages of professionalization, cycling stars did not receive any wages and were therefore forced to secure their income through race earnings. The increase in the popularity of the sport was followed by the increase in riders’ income.[6] The interdependent relations necessary for the expansion of capitalism slowly developed; increasing sales motivated the newspapers to improve the quality of the spectacle by increase the race winnings, forcing the sponsors to offer better wages in order to recruit and maintain the loyalty of the top cyclists, ultimately attracting more fan-base that in turn attracted other secondary sponsors that turned the caravans into marketing spectacles as well. This became even more lucrative as other means of communication joined in, particularly radio and later on television.

Jean-François Mignot points out at the first three decades of the Cold War was a period of crisis for the sport in Europe, emphasizing that urbanization and the increasing sales of motorcycles forced bicycle manufacturers to decrease their team sponsorship funding and ultimately sending the salaries of professional riders in a downward spiral.[7] This, argued Mignot, forced the professional rider to seek sponsorships outside of the bicycle world.[8] The stars and their teams began to tap the “extra-sportif” market for sponsorship and this market segment was quick to capitalize on the opportunity.[9]

Jean-François Mignot points out that sponsoring newspapers and bicycle companies interested in protecting their own profit margins opposed the penetration of “extra-sportif” sponsors by trying to control the rules of the sport in order to impede their participation, but at the end the market forces prevailed.[10] This European crisis that unfolded between the 1950s and 1980s was in fact the initial era of global commercialization of the sport. Mignot’s Euro centrism impedes him from moving beyond the region’s Grand Tours and Classics, not recognizing that the “extra-sportif” sponsorships that challenged the status quo took professional cycling outside of Europe and introduced it to the rest of the world. For example, by the 1950s radio transmissions of the European races were common in distant places like Colombia where their own private sectors had replicated the European business model and established lucrative professional road races to supply the local demand for professional bicycle road racing. The first edition of the Colombian Grand Tour, La Vuelta a Colombia, was organized in 1951, and by then several local Classics like the Tunja-Bucaramanga and the Medellín-Sansón were already engrained in the Colombian cycling culture. As in the case of Europe, local newspapers like El Tiempo became interested in sponsoring the local Grand Classic as a means to increase sales and circulation, but contrary to the European distrust of “extra-sportif” sponsors, the Colombian organizers welcomed other private local sponsors including the national airline Avianca, the Bavaria brewery, Avisos Zeón and the Flota Mercante Grancolombiana.[11]

The crisis of professional bicycle road racing in Europe described by Mignot was certainly caused by a decreasing popularity of the sport and the internal struggles over the monopoly of the sponsorship and management of the sport, but it was also the market’s response to the emergence of other professional sports in Europe as well as the professional cyclist’s ability to capitalize on the globalization of the sport. It was an illustration of how, in a capitalist system, the internal saturation of a market led to the natural expansion into other global markets, as in the case of Colombia in the 1940s and 1950s.[12]

Such was the case of French Born, José Beyaerst, the 1948 Olympic road race champion who moved to Colombia after the Second World War, winning the second edition of the Vuelta a Colombia in 1952 and later on establishing a career as the coach for the Colombian national cycling team.[13] Beyaerst would make Colombia his home, developing the professionalization of the sport and becoming a key player in what would later become one of the cycling powers of the world. The expansionism of the sport would reach all corners of the world between the 1950s and the 1980s, it was a period of crisis for Europe as Mignot points out but it was a glorious time for global professional bicycle road racing.

Television was the game-changer, spearheading the resurgence of professional cycling in Europe in the 1980s. Taking advantage of the integration of Europe, race organizers capitalized on the magic of television to attract new European audiences, redesigning the stage circuits of the Grand Tours (Giro d’Italia, Vuelta a España, and the Tour de France) with the intention of tapping new urban centers that were outside of Spain, France, and Italy.[14] Television also globalized the European Grand Tours, introducing the cycling stars to the world, providing an opportunity for sponsors to reach a global audience, selling commercial air space, and as a result increasing revenues, salaries and profits for the whole sport.

Jean-François Mignot points out that the globalization of the sport also impacted the nature of cycling teams. By the 1980s the teams competing in the Grand Tours were no longer made up of Spanish, Italian, and French riders; their nationalities diversified and so did their sponsors.[15] Although Mignot highlights the fact that by 1986 the American Greg LeMond had won the Tour de France, Colombia’s Lucho Herrera had conquered the Vuelta a España (1987), the Russian Evgueni Berzin the Giro d’Italia (1994), and the Australian Cadel Evans the Tour de France (2011), he does not point out that these foreign cyclists also brought with them new local sponsors that then began to compete with European sponsors.[16] Mignot avoids talking about the American Lance Armstrong, leaving a large gap in the history of the globalization of the sport, considering that the American rider won seven consecutive Tour de France championships (1999-2005) before the US Anti-Doping Agency and the Union Cycliste Internationale stripped him from his titles after a doping scandal. Although LeMond popularized cycling racing in the United States it was Armstrong that converted it into a multi-billion dollar industry bringing in American brands such as RadioShack and Motorola into the world of cycling.

Jean-François Mignot’s research illustrates how the sport expanded globally as the Western World exported the idea of the professionalization and commercialization of cycling, taking advantage of the expansion of Western culture across the world, the increasing leisure time and incomes of the global population, and the increasing communications technology that allowed viewers from across the world to connect with the live stage by stage action of the Grand Tours and the Classics. Nevertheless, his Euro centric approach impedes him from explaining how the professionalization of the sport evolved outside of Europe. Although Mignot clarified early on that his analysis centered on Europe, this approach weakened his argument regarding the globalization of the sport and its repercussion on the European construct, as foreigners began to conquer and dominate the sport as in the case of Americans Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong, or the current stars South African born Christopher Froome and the Colombian climber Nairo Quintana. The incorporation of a broader global perspective would have allowed Mignot to test whether or not the professionalization of the sport in other markets was also spearheaded by other local newspapers or if on the contrary other media and non-media-based sponsors jumped on this business opportunity. It would have also been important to identify when professionalization took place in other markets to compare whether or not the influence of the European sport transcended the borders in a timely manner or even identifying political, economic, social, and cultural factors that delayed its expansion into other global markets. Moreover, it would have been important for Mignot to link the policies of the Union Cycliste Internationale to the globalization of the sport, as well as the escalation of global competition among bicycle manufacturers, and the global competition between scientists, technological designers, and pharmaceutical industries that centered on the legal and illegal preparation of the current athlete.

[1] Jean-François Mignot. “The History of Professional Road Cycling.” HAL archives-ouvertes.fr, https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01326719/document, June 5, 2016, p. 4.

[2] Ibid., 2.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 3.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 4.

[7] Ibid., 5.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] “Vuelta a Colombia Historia.” Ciclismo colombiano – La Vuelta a Colombia. April 25, 2007. Accessed November 21, 2016. http://ciclismo.al-dia.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Kidnapping of Lucho Herrera (and José Beyaert’s Narrow Escape”. Alps&Andes, March 2000. Accessed November 21, 2016. http://www.alpsandes.com/posts/clinginquisition.com/2013/04/the-kidnapping-of-lucho-herrera-and.html

 

[14] Mignot, “The History of Professional Road Cycling,” 5.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid., 6.

What about the periphery? Swedish wealth-income ratios in historical perspective

Wealth-Income Ratios in a Small, Developing Economy: Sweden, 1810–2014

by

Daniel Waldenström (Paris School of Economics and Research Institute of Industrial Economics daniel.waldenstrom@nek.uu.se)

ABSTRACT: This study uses new data on Swedish national wealth over the last two hundred years to examine whether the patterns in wealth-income ratios found by Piketty and Zucman (2014) extend to small and less developed economies. The findings reveal both similarities and differences. During the industrialization era, Sweden’s domestic wealth was relatively low because of low saving rates and instead foreign capital imports became important. Twentieth century trends and levels are more similar, but in Sweden government wealth grew more important, not least through its relatively large public pension system. Overall, the findings suggest that initial conditions and economic and political institutions matter for the structure and evolution of national wealth.

URL: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:uufswp:2015_006

Distributed by NEP-HIS on 2016-10-17

Review by Anna Missiaia

 
This paper looks at the evolution of wealth-income ratios in Sweden over the last two hundred years. Wealth-income ratios have gained increasing attention as an aftermath of the release of Capital in the 21^st Century by Thomas Piketty as well as the more specific paper by Piketty and Zucman (2014). The trajectory of wealth-income ratios in core economies such as the US, the UK, Germany and France shows a U-shape pattern over the last two hundred years, with a level of 600-700% of wealth over income in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, a low point of 200-300% in the 1970s and a subsequent increase up to 400-600% today. The U-shape is, in the interpretation of Piketty and Zucman, the consequence of the two world wars and the creation of the welfare state while in the last decades we are seeing a reversal and a “return to historical norms”. The come back of capital is potentially interesting as wealth accumulation can have different effects on the economy and the society, depending on weather the additional wealth is in public or private hands. Also, the increase in wealth relative to income poses new questions on what the optimal taxation strategy should be. In terms of the scope of this line of research, at the end of their paper Piketty and Zucman call for a further effort to cover new and non-core countries in the analysis. Identifying the components of wealth driving the increase in the ratio is also a worthwhile next step.

The work by Walderström goes in this direction in two ways. First, it looks at a “small, developing economy” such as Sweden, which represents at least part of the periphery that is missing in previous research. Moreover, it discusses to some extent the determinants of Swedish wealth in comparison with other core countries, suggesting that the composition of wealth can dramatically change the interpretation of the ratio.

The inclusion of small economies in the analysis is important because theory predicts a different evolution of wealth-income ratios during industrialization depending on the size of the country.  In particular, large economies (like the ones studied by Piketty and Zucman) are expected to increase their wealth while small economies are expected to increase capital imports. Moreover, Sweden is an excellent case-study for looking at the effect of a social democratic welfare state and its political institutions on the accumulation of national wealth.

The empirical analysis in the paper is grounded on a new body of evidence that, as it often happens with Sweden, provides very detailed information compared to other countries. In this case, the Swedish National Wealth Database (SNWD)  provides information on the household sector, the public sector and national, private and public savings following the same structure of Piketty and Zucman (2014).

Swedish farmers before the creation of the universalistic welfare-state system

The results of the paper are the following: Sweden in the 19^th century had a much lower ratio (about half) compared to core countries such as the UK, France and Germany but it had a very similar level compared to the US. The author then goes on and asks whether 19^th century Sweden is really comparable to the US in terms of national wealth dynamics. The answer is no. Sweden had a low ratio because of its low level of savings due to low incomes. The US had a low ratio because of a high level of income growth that was dominating wealth growth. For this reason, Sweden had to rely much more heavily on capital imports to sustain its industrialization. The 20^th century shows again a much lower ratio for Sweden compared to the core countries (this time both European countries and the US alike) but the explanation lays this time in the increasing role of the Swedish Government and the creation of the well-known universalistic welfare-state system which redirected resources from private wealth to provision of public goods. In this sense, the discussion on the emergence of the public pension system, which is neglected by the analysis of national wealth in core countries by Piketty and Zucman, is most interesting. In short, the argument is that creation of a public pension system with a large share of unfunded pensions financed by taxation led to a decrease in saving for retirement and thus wealth. The figure below shows the low ratio for Sweden over the last two hudred years.

Private welath-income ratios in comparison.

The main contribution of this work is showing that the patterns of core countries, that are often at the core of the research and speculation Piketty and coauthors, are far from being exhaustive in explaining national wealth at world level. Also, as the same wealth-income ratio can hide very different underlying structural differences, the use of a more detailed breakdown of public wealth that includes pensions is also much appreciated. On the other hand, it is clear that because of its very peculiar history (see the non-participation to the world wars and the early formation of such a strong welfare state) Sweden cannot be considered as fully representative of the entire periphery. More research on other countries is needed to capture the entire picture.

 

References

Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the 21st century, Cambridge, MA: Belknap.

Piketty, T. and G. Zucman (2014) Capital is back: Wealth-income ratios in rich countries, 1700–2010, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(3): 1255–1310.

Waldenström, D. (2015), Wealth-income ratios in the small economy: Sweden over the past two centuries, Vox post, http://voxeu.org/article/wealth-income-ratios-small-economies

 

 

Off with his head? Capital punishment and jurors’ dilemmas in 19th and 20th century Britain

The Fall of Capital Punishment and the Rise of Prisons: How Punishment Severity Affects Jury Verdicts

By Anna Bindler (University of Gothenburg) and Randi Hjalmarsson (University of Gothenburg and CEPR)

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of punishment severity on jury decision-making using a large archival data set from the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London from 1715 to 1900. We take advantage of three natural experiments in English history, which result in sharp decreases in punishment severity: The offense specific abolition of capital punishment in the 1800s, the temporary halt of penal transportation during the American Revolution, and the abolition of transportation in 1853. Using a difference-in-differences design to study the abolition of the death penalty and pre-post designs to study the temporary and permanent halts to transportation, we find that decreasing expected punishment (especially via the end of the death penalty), had a large and significant impact on jury behavior, generally leading to the jury being ‘harsher’. Moreover, we find that the size of the effect differs with defendants’ gender and criminal history. These results raise concerns about the impartiality of juries as well as the implicit assumption often made when designing and evaluating criminal justice policies today – that the chance of conviction is independent of the harshness of the penalty.

URL: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0674

Distributed by NEP-HIS on: 2016-10-16

Reviewed by Mark J Crowley

This is a very interesting article. It focuses on what is a hot topic today in British jurisprudence, and sets it within a strong historical context. It shows a deep understanding of the issues concerning statutory interpretation, and the consequent pressures facing juries. The uniqueness of this article is that it explores the extent to which juries were influenced by the severity of the punishments available to Judges. The article draws on thousands of pages of testimony from the Old Bailey Court Records. This magnificent online resource has opened several new possible avenues of research into the legal history of the United Kingdom, and this article will undoubtedly make a very important contribution in this field.

The Old Bailey, The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, has passed down countless historic legal judgments

In examining the wide range of material from thousands of court cases, the authors conclude that the pressures on jurors were immense. These pressures, and ultimately their decision on whether to convict, were deeply influenced by not only moral judgements reached by individuals, but emotional considerations based on the severity of the sentence likely to be passed. In the nineteenth century, when punishments such as transportation to Australia were used for crimes, this would often lead to the death of those convicted (owing to the bad conditions and the length of the journey) and raise deeper questions about the quality and validity of the evidence. The conscience of jurors certainly would be provoked if the person sentenced to transportation or death was later found not guilty of the crime to which they were convicted.

The common scene of a public hanging had been an integral part of the English Legal System, but was now becoming more open to question in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

In their detailed analysis of the statistics concerning conviction rates, the authors show that there was an overall increase of 7.6% in convictions after the abolition of the death penalty. This was taken as an average across a range of offences. The area seeing the largest increase in convictions was for sexual offences (increasing by 34.5%) and fraud (increasing by 22%). However, the authors argue that these convictions, passed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, did not occur against a backdrop of improved evidence in court. In fact, they suggest that since the abolition of the death penalty in the twentieth century, it is possible that jurors were more ready to convict in the knowledge that this would lead to imprisonment (and subsequent release if found not guilty) than if capital punishment had remained in place.

Another aspect explored by the authors is whether there is a connection between capital punishment and criminal behaviour. Citing the 1823 Judgement of Death Act, the authors note that Prime Minister Robert Peel used this legislation to render capital punishment discretionary for judges (except for murder and treason). This could potentially explain the rise in convictions for other crimes that the authors cite, suggesting again that the absence of capital punishment for these crimes made juries more likely to convict. Moreover, they allude to the procedural changes that occurred with the conduct of juries in 1974. Hereafter, juries would only be permitted to listen to one case, and would remain in charge of the case until its conclusion (or their removal by a judge). Previous regulations permitted juries to listen to several cases. This procedural change was in part to ensure the quality of decision-making to facilitate the best form of justice to all through the age-old English legal system that ensured trial by your peers.

The latter part of the paper uses complicated (and very impressive) quantitative methods to identify the discontinuities caused by the changes to the sentencing provisions. The overall conclusion is that not only the ultimate abolition of capital punishment in Britain in the twentieth century contributed to increased convictions, but that changes to sentencing laws provided fertile ground for increased criminality. While the reasons for this are not explored in detail, they could be connected to contemporary debates on this topic, where Conservatives have traditionally argued that ‘softer’ punishments, and community rehabilitation does not provide a deterrent for criminals.

The dilemma facing juries was whether their conviction would result in the death penalty. Later evidence showing that the accused was innocent would prove a major factor influencing juries when considering the legal punishments open to them when listening to court cases.

Critique
There is a lot of insightful analysis and information in this paper. The connections that it develops between changes to sentencing law and the impact on juror’s psyche is interesting and new. It is based on a sound and comprehensive archival base that shows a deep understanding of the legal context. It answers its original research question comprehensively. Any suggestions for improvement would seem like a criticism, which I do not intend to make, as I believe this paper will make a very important contribution to the historiography of the English legal system in its current form. My suggestions perhaps would be more aptly placed if they were offered as possible suggestions for future research. For example, it would be interesting to get more information (if it is available) about the social class from which jurors were drawn. Since juries were supposed to reflect the composition of society, it would be interesting to see whether there were correlations between sentencing and the social demographic from which the jurors came. For example, would a conviction of a working-class criminal be more likely with a jury comprising people from predominantly a higher social class. I appreciate that this is a completely different research question, but as noted, this paper has comprehensively answered its own research question but has posed several others that may be worthy of investigation. Furthermore, this paper has examined the thousands of materials available at the Old Bailey, but would there be any scope to extend this research to a local level, to ascertain whether there were any local or regional variations to these findings? Nevertheless, this is a most impressive paper, and I hope that we will hear a lot more from these authors on this topic.

References
Burns, Arthur, and Joanna Innes. Rethinking the age of reform: Britain 1780-1850. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Croall, Hazel. Crime and society in Britain. Longman, 2011.
Christoph, James Bernard. Capital Punishment and British Politics: The British Movement to Abolish the Death Penalty, 1945-57. London: Allen & Unwin (1962).
Smith, Susan J. “Social relations, neighbourhood structure, and the fear of crime in Britain.” The Geography of Crime. London: Routledge (1989): 193-227.