Child support trials

Research hypothesis: Does the gender of the judge matter in child support decisions? Data: Administrative data from Lima-Peru consisting of child support trials where where the plaintiff, a single mother and caregiver, initiates legal proceedings against the defendant, the father, to seek child support. The data was gathered from the Judicial Records website (Consulta de Expedientes Judiciales, CEJ) covering 4 "Judicial Districts" that constitutes Lima (namely, "Lima", "Lima Norte", "Lima Sur", and "Lima Este"). This data was used by exploiting the fact that cases are randomly allocated to courts overseen by an individual judge, which allows us to identify a clear causal relationship between their gender and child support decisions.