工作条件对生产率的影响：来自美国公共辩护系统的证据
The impact of working conditions on productivity: Evidence from the U.S. public defense system
Journal of Public Economics · 2026 · [{"name": "Yang Liu", "affiliation": ["University of Southern California"]}, {"name": "Amy C. Mahler", "affiliation": ["RAND Corporation"]}]
中文摘要
第六修正案保障所有被告人无论其收入水平如何，均享有获得有效法律代理的权利。在实践中，这一宪法承诺关键取决于代表低收入当事人的公设辩护人的工作条件。本文考察公设辩护人所面临的工作量如何影响其承办案件的结果。利用美国两个州的全部公设辩护案件记录，以及由严格案件分配规则所导致的工作量准随机变化，我们发现稳健的证据表明：辩护律师的工作量增加一个标准差（约增加25起案件），会使监禁刑期延长12%，并有提示性证据表明定罪概率有所上升。我们利用细粒度的律师时间使用数据探讨其作用机制，发现工作量上升会使各项任务的总体投入时间减少18%，而审查证据、开展法律研究等部分独立任务甚至可能被完全放弃。
Abstract
The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to effective legal representation for all defendants, regardless of income. In practice, this constitutional promise depends critically on the working conditions of the public defenders who represent low-income clients. This paper examines how the workloads public defenders face affect the outcomes of the cases they handle. Using the universe of public defense case records from two U.S. states and quasi-random variation in workloads induced by strict case assignment rules, we find robust evidence that a one–standard–deviation increase in an attorney’s workload (about 25 additional cases) increases incarceration sentence length by 12 percent, with suggestive evidence of higher probability of conviction. We explore mechanisms using granular attorney time-use data and find that rising workloads reduce time spent across all tasks by 18 percent, while some independent tasks, such as reviewing evidence and conducting legal research, may be dropped entirely.