Appendix B - Examining Reciprocal Effects of Unfair Treatment and Neighborhood Discrimination

Summary

In our analysis in Chapter 2 (Table 2.4), we regard unfair treatment as exogenous to perceptions of neighborhood discrimination, even though perceptions of discrimination, or procedural unfairness, may conceivably influence interpretations of experiences with legal authorities (e.g., Lind and Tyler 1988). To determine whether our assumption of exogeneity is reasonable, we estimated a simultaneous equations model in which unfair treatment by police and neighborhood discrimination are reciprocally related. To identify the model, we excluded female, age, and married from the neighborhood discrimination equation and anti-Black stereotypes and anti-Semitism from the unfair treatment equation. We estimated this model using two-stage least squares. The estimates are shown in Table B.1. As can be seen, unfair treatment continues to have a significant impact on neighborhood discrimination (although the standard error for the coefficient increases), while the coefficient for neighborhood discrimination on unfair treatment is small and insignificant. Although estimating possible reciprocal effects is more critical for Blacks, we display similar estimates for Whites as well.