Trust in the Judicial System: Evidence from Brazil

Rodrigo De-Losso and Luciana Gross Cunha Joelson Oliveira Sampaio

No 2015_18, Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP)

Abstract: One issue that affects the economic and social development of a country is the ability of the judiciary to present itself as a legitimate instance in resolving conflicts that arise in the social, business and economic development. One way to measure this is through legitimacy of the motivations that lead citizens to trust or not in the Judiciary. We created the Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index (BCJI) as a validation argument for our confidence measure. The BCJI is a measure of perception, which shows the opinion of the population about Brazil’s judiciary. Our results indicate that race and gender are important predictors once controlled for other characteristics of respondents. Blacks have a slightly lower level of confidence in the judiciary than whites. Women also present less confidence than men. We also show that people with low income have lower levels of trust. Our findings also have other important implications for confidence in the judicial system. We show that there is a positive and strong relationship between confidence in the judicial system and propensity to seek the judiciary.

Keywords: Trust in the judicial system; Institutions; Judiciary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-08-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger, nep-law and nep-soc
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Working Paper: TRUST IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM: EVIDENCE FROM BRAZIL (2016)
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