Akhtari M, Schwerter F.
Police Use of Force and Trust. Working Paper.
AbstractA series of fatal police use of force cases have recently been in the national spotlight: Michael Brown in Missouri, Walter Scott in South Carolina, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and so on. Regardless of the legal justification surrounding each case, there has been a strong reaction from the public. We study the effect of local police fatal use of force on trust in police, in government, and in other formal and informal institutions. We find evidence that trust in police by minorities is lower, relative to whites, when minorities compose a higher share of fatalities from police encounters in their county. In particular, minorities are responsive to the share of police fatalities that are minority but, on the other side, whites are not responsive to the share of police fatalities that are white or the share of police fatalities that are minority. There is no effect on trust in other institutions (such as trust in the local or national government, military, Supreme Court, banks, public schools, congress, and the president) and non-institutional measures of trust (such as trust in neighbors, co-workers, local shop clerks, people from different racial/ethnic groups, and trust in general). Our results suggest that minority attitudes toward the police are correlated with police behavior; the same correlation does not hold for white attitudes.
Akhtari M, Moreira D, Trucco L.
Political Turnover and Bureaucratic Disruption: Evidence from Administrative, Employer-employee Matched Data in Brazil. Working Paper.
AbstractWe study how political turnover, in particular a change in the political party of the mayor, in Brazil affects the turnover and profile of public employees in local governments. We find that when a new party takes office, there is inflation in the size of the bureaucracy: the share of new employees is 11 percentage points higher in municipalities with a new party in office compared to municipalities with no change in the political party. The hiring of new employees takes place within the first few months after the new party takes office and is not compensated for with a concurrent or eventual increase in the share of employees that leave the municipal government. We also document the source and destination employment of those who enter and leave the municipal government and their portfolios in terms of education, prior wages, and alignment between prior and current occupation to better understand selection into public office upon a change in the political party of the government.