Markets like women too

Last week I wrote about how markets militate against racism. It's a basic and over-worn point, but it seems to be forgotten regularly anyway. Here I shall make the same point, but with respect to women. It's a common view that women are paid less than men on average, even after you account for hours, experience, qualifications, industry, risks, pleasantness of job and so on (though they do account for a very large fraction of the gap).

But there are a few other factors that studies have only started looking into recently. One of those is exit. Women often exit the labour force earlier than men, trade down to more flexible or part-time jobs that don't pay as well. It might well be said that this is the product of socially constructed expectations about what different genders are expected to do and how they are expected to structure their lives—with one gender still doing more work outside the house and one still doing more inside.

But even if this is true, it is important to stress that this 'discrimination', which certainly doesn't seem to result in lower happiness for women, happens at the level of upbringing, schooling, and so on rather than at the level of employment. Firms are not to blame and indeed, recent research suggests firms are actually pretty pro-women.

For example, "Gender Differences in Executive Compensation and Job Mobility", published in the Journal of Labour Economics in 2012 (up-to-date abstract here, full working paper pdf here) finds that if you control for background (i.e. skills and talent) and exit (i.e. women staying in the workforce) women earn more than men and get more aggressively promoted than men.

Fewer women than men become executive managers. They earn less over their careers, hold more junior positions, and exit the occupation at a faster rate. We compiled a large panel data set on executives and formed a career hierarchy to analyze mobility and compensation rates. We find that, controlling for executive rank and background, women earn higher compensation than men, experience more income uncertainty, and are promoted more quickly. Amongst survivors, being female increases the chance of becoming CEO. Hence, the unconditional gender pay gap and job-rank differences are primarily attributable to female executives exiting at higher rates than men in an occupation where survival is rewarded with promotion and higher compensation.

Another paper, from July this year, finds that reservation wages (the lowest amount a person will take to do the job rather than remaining unemployed and taking nothing) explain the entirety of the gender wage gap that remains after you control for personal and job characteristics. This suggests, again, that the discrimination that is happening (if it is happening) is not coming from markets.

The economic literature typically finds a persistent wage gap between men and women. In this paper, based on a sample of newly unemployed persons seeking work in Germany, we find that the gender wage gap disappears once we control for reservation wages in a wage decomposition exercise. Despite a concern with reservation wages being potentially endogenous, we believe that the exploratory results in our paper can help one better understand what the driving forces are behind the gender wage gap. As the gender gap in actual wages appears to mirror the gender gap in reservation wages, there is a clear need to better understand why there are gender differences in the way reservation wages are set in the first place. Whereas a gender gap in actual wages could reflect either productivity differences or discrimination, a gender gap in reservation wages essentially reflects either productivity differences or differing expectations.

This just adds to a burgeoning literature finding that the reason men and women have different outcomes in labour markets is that they differ systematically in job-relevant ways. For example, men in the Netherlands systematically choose more competitive academic tracks. Even very narrow estimates of the risk-tolerance gap between men and women estimates it at about one standard deviation (implying the male and female distributions overlap 80%).

Again, this does not imply there is no discrimination in society—it just shows that it's not corporations, firms, companies, businesses, start-ups, market organisations who are doing it.

How lovely to see another statistical misrepresentation gallop by

Sadly, Joan Smith has previous on this sort of thing:

So let’s go back to that report I mentioned earlier, and what it had to say about false allegations of rape and domestic violence. Starmer described them as “very rare” and went on to say something that might have been written with Gone Girl in mind. “In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes that are associated with these cases,” he observed with a hint of weariness. Everyone who works in this area knows what he means, and foremost among those myths is the idea that victims can’t be trusted. It’s a favourite theme of the Daily Mail, which is always ready to clear its front page to highlight cases of men who have been acquitted of rape, without pointing out that false allegations are rare.

The figures are stark. Starmer asked the Crown Prosecution Service to look at a 17-month period, during which there were 5,651 rape prosecutions and a staggering 111,891 for domestic violence. In the same period, only 35 women were prosecuted for making false allegations of rape and six for false claims of domestic violence. The standout finding was that occasions when a suspect deliberately makes a false allegation of rape or domestic violence “purely out of malice” are “extremely rare”.

Oh dear. The number of false allegations that are prosecuted is not the same as the number of false allegations of rape that are made.

Sadly, the only two things we really know about false allegations are the following. The first is that they do happen: we've (a very small number of) people currently serving jail sentences for having done so. The second is that the vast majority of allegations are not false. Our problem is that we do not know the gap between that vast majority and the number that are definitely false.

As best we know the number of false allegations is in the 3 to 8% range of all allegations made.

The point of this is not to muse on the background of what should be done about allegations of rape. Rather, it's to point, in fact to jeer, at the manipulation of the statistics that is being performed. The number of prosecutions for making false allegations is not a good or reasonable guide to the number of false allegations that are made.

Markets don't like racism

It is a commonplace to the point of boringness among advocates of free markets that they make people pay to discriminate based on their tastes. A factory owner who restricts employment to whites only will face a narrower talent pool—likely paying higher wages for lower skills in total or on average. Southern US states had to pass laws to try and stop employers competing with each other over black labour and bidding up their wages. 

Even owners of basketball clubs believed to be personally racist have disproportionately black teams, paying them huge sports star wages. However, not all ethnic groups have similarly prestigious or high-flying careers, and they do not all take home equal market incomes. It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that taste-based discrimination is driving this and the market isn't doing its job fully. But there is an alternative.

Employers cannot observe an employee's productivity directly, at least before they employ them. But they can observe some things about them that signal productivity—using statistics. For example, if on average south Asians or Polish migrants tend to work harder than white Brits, they can use this fact about them to help make their employment decision. This isn't racist—they don't prefer employing south Asians, and they would be equally happy to pay a white Brit £6.50 an hour to produce £7 of stuff—it's just that on average south Asians produce £7 of stuff an hour (say), whereas white Brits produce £6.40.

Which one is actually in place? We can test this. The answer is a resounding 'statistical discrimination'. For example, minorities in France did worse when a large randomised study made them anonymous in job applications—so firms couldn't see their names and thus ethnicities—implying that the reason they were called back and employed less was because their resumes/CVs were less attractive.

In Germany, job applicants with Turkish-sounding names got less callbacks than those with German-sounding names—unless both applicants had a favourable employment history reference. Then, for a given quality of reference, employers didn't care whether they were Turkish or German. On eBay, white sellers receive lower prices selling stereotypically black products and black sellers receive lower prices selling stereotypically white products, but these differences go away when sellers build up credible reputations.

US "landlord response rates across neighborhood racial compositions conform to the statistical discrimination model where agents use past experience to predict applicant quality by race." In the Israeli used car market there is "robust evidence of discrimination against Arab buyers and sellers which, the analysis suggests, is motivated by ‘statistical’ rather than ‘taste’ considerations." In an experiment selling iPod Nanos online, its being held by a black hand made buyers warier, to a similar degree as its being held by a tattooed white hand.

People do no racial discrimination whatsoever, and choose entirely based on expected points return, when picking their fantasy football team. Finally, even most of shared renting decisions in London are based on statistical concerns (some ethnic groups commit more crimes per capita), rather than personal preferences over races and ethnicities.

It is perfectly well and good to lament the fact that for whatever reason, some ethnic groups are less qualified, systematically less hard-working, achieve worse educational results, commit more crimes or whatever. This might be the result of discrimination on some other margin. But we can be pretty sure that markets are picking only on the criteria we want them to use.

Why does the son rise?

John Cochrane recently gave a speech where one of the main threads involved talking down the importance of income and wealth inequality. Poverty, and generally not having as much as we would like are bad, he says, but is there anything bad about inequality per se? That is: is there at least one respect in which things would be better if some people who are very well off were made worse off? He argues that there isn't, or if there is, it is of only trivial importance, and outweighed by all of the costs of actually 'doing something' about inequality.

In a response on Bloomberg View, Noah Smith argued that economists should respect people's actual preferences, and since people show strong preferences against wealth and income inequality, we should respect them. He uses the example of how people prefer to take nothing over free money when they are made offers they perceive as 'unfair' in the Ultimatum Game. On top of that, he says, inequality leads to socio-political unrest, which we can all agree is very bad and costly, citing a 1993 paper.

Finally, Tony Yates adds some extra arguments on his blog. He says luck has a big role to play in success, but success can also buy some of the non-luck factors in success (e.g. education), meaning that it can 'set off path dependence'—according to Yates this can lead to inefficient outcomes by distorting the allocation of talent. He says inequality reduces public good provision (e.g. education—although I'm not sure that is really a public good). And he says that inequality might make 'crony capitalism' more likely.

I've written twice about equality before: once saying that Rawlsian-style justice demands inequality of wealth/income in certain very relevant circumstances; another time arguing that Hayekian-style information economics militates towards equality of wealth. There are lots more things to say in this debate, but here I intend to take issue only with one of Yates' claims: the idea that luck + path-dependence means inequality is passed down through the generations (I can't see why exactly he thinks this distorts the allocation of talent, but here I'm only questioning the mechanism).

Luck is certainly a huge factor in success. And people do pay big money for better education to try and make sure their kids are more likely to succeed. But does this work? Let's look at some studies. Random selection into a better school in Beijing has no effect, random selection into a better school in Chicago has close to no effect, random selection into a better Kenyan school has no effect, nor does it in Missouri, nor in New York City. Once you control for student characteristics, Australian private schools didn't outperform state schools on the 2009 PISA. Conscription into extra education didn't much affect life outcomes in late 1970s France. In 1950s England, going to an elite school made no difference to a youth's job market outcomes. The literature is huge and there are many many more examples.

And other literatures point to the same conclusion. For example, we now know that the heritability of intelligence increases through life (to hit around 50-90% in adulthood), while 'shared environment'—upbringinging, parental inputs and schooling—falls to around zero. This is supported by traditional twin studies, twins reared apart studies, adoption studies, and now whole-genome analysis.

So it should not be surprising that it's actually really really really really hard to make sure your descendants stay rich with the proceeds of luck. In fact, we know that that's not why the descendants of the rich often are rich because we have a couple of pretty good experiments showing it! For example:

We track descendants of those eligible to win in Georgia’s Cherokee Land Lottery of 1832, which had nearly universal participation among adult white males. Winners received close to the median level of wealth – a large financial windfall orthogonal to parents’ underlying characteristics that might have also affected their children’s human capital. Although winners had slightly more children than non-winners, they did not send them to school more. Sons of winners have no better adult outcomes (wealth, income, literacy) than the sons of non-winners, and winners’ grandchildren do not have higher literacy or school attendance than non-winners’ grandchildren. This suggests only a limited role for family financial resources in the formation of human capital in the next generations in this environment and a potentially more important role for other factors that persist through family lines.

The same is true for modern lottery winners—the truest example of pure luck in success. And it took only two generations for the descendants of slaves to catch up with the much more advantaged & wealthy free blacks. Whether rich parents split an inheritance between eighteen kids or one, their grandkids are equally rich. Basically luck mixed with path dependance explains almost nothing.

A reminder to Bill of Rights drafters: all we need is one right

"It's not just the European Union that needs sorting out," UK Prime Minister David Cameron told his Party Conference this week, "it's the European Court of Human Rights." This is not the first time he has said that: he said it to the judges' faces a couple of years back, at the ECHR's gleaming headquarters in leafy Strasbourg. They were not overly impressed. But his audience this week thinks he is spot on, and most people in the UK probably agree. The ECHR is not an EU body but emerged out of the postwar European Convention on Human Rights. In other words, no Parliament agreed to it, no British citizen voted for it, no Prime Minister signed a treaty authorizing its power. Like Topsy, it 'just growed.'

We are all in favour of human rights, of course, but countries disagree on exactly what those rights should be and how they should be enforced. The UK, in particular, has a very different legal tradition from other European countries – one that has served them a long time, and which they are justly proud of. But being empowered to overturn the decision of the courts in the UK and other countries, the ECHR is effectively imposing one legal regime – a judge-led regime – on everyone.

But why do we want the law of different countries to be identical? We can learn a lot from different countries running their affairs in different ways, then looking to see which way is preferable. Imposing a single legal view on a large number of countries prevents that learning from taking place.

And why should an unelected body deign to override the decisions of different countries' courts and legislators anyway? Originally, the plan was that the ECHR would simply influence governments to 'do the right thing'. But now, though it has no democratic legitimacy, it can override the decisions of UK courts and elected UK representatives. So in effect, law is being made by ECHR judges, and countries like the UK are bound by its decisions. That, as Lord Judge pointed out, gives us "a very serious problem with sovereignty".

That is a particularly serious problem when a country thinks that its entire security is at risk. More than once, the ECHR stopped the deportations of suspects to face serious charges, including terrorism and genocide charges, to face trial overseas. Indeed, the ECHR has stopped deportations of foreign nationals already found guilty of serious offences abroad. Often, the grounds for such decisions have been the UK family ties of the accused, or their 'right' to the UK's generous healthcare system. But what really got ministers' goat was the Court's blocking, for a long time, of the deportation of the radical Abu Qatada, wanted on terrorism charges in Jordan.

So now, the UK is to have its own new Bill of Rights, passed by Parliament. Actually, our old one, dating from 1689, has served us pretty well. I only hope that in drafting the new Bill, ministers do not fall for the nonsense perpetrated in the postwar settlement – things like the 'right' to free education. Because every right is someone else's responsibility to provide. You can be sure that every lobby group will be out there, campaigning for 'rights' to this or that or the other, all at taxpayers' expense of course, to be included in the Bill.

But in fact, all we need is one right - the right to be left alone without other people, and especially governments, pushing us around.

If Mr Cameron calls, I will gladly give him a draft.

Owen Jones and this democracy thing again

Owen Jones has decided to take on this Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership thing. You know, the treaty that says that governments must live up to the contracts they sign, further, that it won't be the courts controlled by governments that decide whether they have or not? Marshaling his arguments Jones tells us that:

And if our political elite won’t budge, then it’s up to the rest of us to organise. Criticisms of the EU have been surrendered to the xenophobic right for too long: a democratic People’s Europe has to be built. But TTIP is also a reminder of the constant threat from those in power. When they steal chunks of our democracy away from us, we may find that it is far from easy to win them back.

The argument is not that the TTIP or that arbitration set up are themselves anti-democratic. Rather, that they might curb the ability of the electorate to vote for something in the future. On the grounds that a government might have signed a contract. For example, a contract that asks a private company to provide some medical service or other. That contract stating that if the contract is cancelled then there will be some compensation to be paid. Jones and his ilk are arguing that the payment of such compensation will make renationalisation more expensive and that thus this is a denial of democracy.

Hmm, well, we might recall this also said by Jones:

The Aids crisis was building; more than half the population believed homosexuality was “always wrong”, peaking at 64% in 1987 when just 11% opted for “not wrong at all”; and later that decade the homophobic legislation, section 28, was introduced.

Jones is, of course, against that section 28 stuff even though it was obviously democratic. He opposes it on the grounds that some things are more important than the will of the majority. But once that principle has been conceded we've then got to decide what are those things that are more important than that majority will?

And the TTIP is saying, essentially, that the rule of law is more important than whatever it is the howling mob wants this week. That's certainly something that we would agree with around here.

There really are areas of life that have to be protected from democracy. You can argue, to your taste, as to whether the teaching about homosexuality in schools, the holding of governments to contracts they have freely signed, are such or not. But once we've the basic principle, that democracy is not the sole and over riding factor then we've got to have all of those arguments individually.

Well, yes, this is rather the point about fees for filing tribunal claims

How lovely to see public policy working well for once:

The number of aggrieved workers bringing sex discrimination claims to employment tribunals has tumbled by 90 per cent in a year since claimants were made to pay a fee.

It appears that the prospect of forking out in advance – and losing the money if their case fails – is deterring many of those who may be tempted to use a tribunal to make their employer pay compensation.

But Labour business spokesman Chuka Umunna has promised to abolish the fees, claiming they are unfair.

Chuka, as ever, is missing the point here. The aim and purpose of the fee is to reduce the number of claims. The fee has been instituted, the number of claims has dropped: public policy is actually working. Would that everything done by government worked so well.

The point is not though to make sure that those cruelly done down by t'evil capitalist plutocrats have no recourse: discrimination law still exists and still operates in the normal manner. Those with a good case will happily pay the small fee, those with a frivolous one won't. The impact of this modest fee therefore tells us something most interesting: the number of former claims that were indeed frivolous, or at least highly unlikely to succeed. But if trying it on costs nothing then why not do so?

There's an interesting parallel here with another thing that the British courts get right. In, say, a patent case, the loser pays everyone's court costs and legal fees. In a similar US case the each side pays its own costs, whatever the outcome of the case (except in truly, truly, egregious cases). It costs perhaps $500 to file a suit alleging patent infringement and up to $2 million just to prepare the defence for a trial. The incentives there are obviously for many trivial suits to be filed in the hopes of getting a bit of cash as a settlement to bugger off and stop bothering everyone.

It's worth noting that the US courts are full of patent troll cases: the UK courts have nary a one.

You know, the first thing everyone should know about economics? Incentives matter.

When proven cases of real sex discrimination bring (righteous) damages of tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds the idea of a small fee as a gatekeeper to deter frivolous cases seems both sensible and not a barrier to those real cases moving into the justice system.

It's a good policy but it's not enough

Around here we welcome good policy whoever suggests it. So, given that this is a good policy we welcome it but would also insist that it doesn't go far enough:

 The Liberal Democrats are looking at the decriminalisation of all drugs for personal use and allowing cannabis to be sold on the open market.

Launching his party's draft election manifesto, Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said the party would consider such options after they were advocated in a policy paper due to be discussed at the Lib Dem conference next month.

The paper said the Lib Dems "will adopt the model used in Portugal, where those who possess drugs for personal use will be diverted into other services". The southern European country decriminalised personal possession of all drugs in 2000.

The document also said the party "welcomes the establishment of a regulated cannabis market in Uruguay, Colorado and Washington state".

That we should end the entirely ludicrous policy of jailing people for ingesting their substance of choice into their own bodies is obvious. Government should no more be regulating this than it should be regulating the ingestion of cake, apples and pan haggerty (not that that stops the usual fruits and nuts from arguing that it should of course).

However, simple decriminalisation is not a sufficient policy: for markets do of course require regulation. No, regulation is not "what government does", it's entirely possible for markets to self-regulate. However, for them to do so it's necessary for there to be (in this case at least) brands.

For one of the great problems with drugs being illegal is that no one ever quite knows what they're taking. That heroin might be cut with icing sugar in which case little harm is done. It might be cut with rat poison in which harm is done: and they might have run out of both and not cut it at all in which case you'll be dead soon after injecting. The same is true of all of the other drugs that people like to take (that they like to take them being, obviously, the reason why they should be allowed to take them, it's their life, their body, not yours). Inconsistent quality.

And we saw this before, with the industrialisation of food back in the 19th century. Yes, from the 1870s on (with some very small baby steps a couple of decades earlier) we did have a series of laws about what could be put into what form of food. Alum into bread, that sort of thing. However, by the time the laws came into being the regulation was already happening. By people branding their products so that people could decide for themselves who they trusted to provide a decent and consistent quality. This was in fact the original purpose of manufacturer branding: not to feed excessive consumption but to identify those feeds that wouldn't kill you. As you would know by still being alive a week after you'd had your last portion of that nourishing beef broth from Rat and Catcher's Patent Manufactory.

That is, to regulate product quality, something we desperately desire in this field of currently illegal drugs, we need one of two things. Either legislation providing a testing system (something that's simply not going to happen) or freedom of supply as well as consumption. For only with that freedom of supply will there be that branding and thus regulation of quality that we need.

Decriminalisation is better than the current situation (and your humble author does live in Portugal and has done throughout the decriminalisation process) but it's not enough, we need to move to full legality. Controlled distribution, fine, taxed, fine, limited, fine, but regulation of quality must be done in some manner. And the best way is for producers to compete on quality just as was done 160 years ago with food.

Do we need Children’s Services?

Of course our children need care and protection from abuse. The question is whether the responsible bureaucracies give value for money, or indeed provide that care and protection at all. Following each scandal, we are told that no one is to blame: the problem is systemic. Then we are told that the bureaucracies will work better together in the future. Then history repeats itself. Rotherham should be a wake up call. In fact, the problem really is systemic and it needs a systems solution. It is not a question of money. From 2001 to 2010 English and Welsh councils’ child social care expenditure nearly doubled from £4.7bn to £8.6bn at 2010 prices. Would anyone suggest that the quality and extent of child care has doubled?

Of course the problem is hugely complex and there is no single, simple solution but at the root is the excess of bodies paddling in the same swamp: Local Authority children’s services, schools, doctors and hospitals, police and charities such as Barnardo’s and the NSPCC. Each case is like Gerard Hoffnung’s performance by solo violin and massed conductors.

Serious child abuse of any form is a crime. Where a teacher, doctor or any social worker believes that a crime may have been committed, or may still be in progress, then that should be reported to the police like any other possible crime. The police should investigate without fear, favour, concerns for being branded racist or other politically correct excuses for doing nothing – or passing the buck to social services.

The bigger question is then whether children’s services are necessary at all. If the current Local Authority bureaucracies did not exist, what would we put in their place?

Rotherham demands a systemic solution and that in turn demands we start with a blank page.

Clearly we need the youth justice system and adoption facilities though those are also offered by the voluntary sector, e.g. Barnardo’s. Given Local Authorities’ manifest incompetence in adoption maybe that should be turned over to the voluntary sector and perhaps arrangements for fostering too. If taxpayer value would be improved, as it is being for schools, by channelling taxpayer funding through the voluntary sector, then why not? Equally well if something like the existing services can be radically rebuilt to give our children the protection they need, then so be it. But if we just go on tinkering and adding more boxes to tick, more Rotherhams will follow.

Boris is right. Tinkering with the presumption of innocence is, unfortunately, a minor change in the law

Boris Johnson has called for a change in the law. He wants to shift the burden of proof on those accused of travelling to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS. No longer will the prosecution be required to prove that they intended to join ISIS. Rather the accused will have to prove that they travelled there for innocent purposes. There has been near universal condemnation of Boris's proposals. The Prime Minister called it a knee-jerk reaction. Nick Clegg was not a big fan either. In addition to rejecting his proposals commentators on both the left and the right have taken issue with Boris's statement that this was a “minor change” in the law. They argued that instead it was an attack on this hallowed principle that is the presumption of innocence. The fact Boris did not realise that was further proof that he is unfit to become Prime Minister.

However, Boris is completely right. Not about the substantive proposal but about the fact it represents a minor change in the law. The fact of the matter is that the presumption of innocence has in the past few decades been severely eroded. In 1935 we were told by the Lord Chancellor Viscount Sankey that “throughout the web of English criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt” [1]. There were only two exceptions: (i) the defence of insanity and (ii) statutory exceptions.

How often did Parliament by statute make exceptions to this golden thread? Andrew Ashworth and Meredith Blake attempted to find out in 1996 [2]. They look at how many of the offences triable in Crown Courts derogated from the presumption of innocence. It was not 5%, 10% or 20%. Out of 540 offences, 219 involved some form of departure from the presumption of innocence. That's just over 40%! In the Magistrates' Courts the position was hardly better. There, the defendant bears the burden of proving “any exception, exemption, proviso, excuse or qualification” [3]. At this point one can ask whether the exception has swallowed the rule. So Boris was not wrong when he described it as a minor change in the law.

The situation has not really gotten better since 1996. Parliament continues to reverse the burden of proof on a number of offences. In one respect, however, the situation has gotten better. Previously, if Parliament imposed a reverse burden of proof the courts would just have to apply it. However, following the coming into force of the Human Rights Act, the courts have been able to de facto nullify some of those reverse burdens.

For example in R v Lambert [2001] UKHL 37, the House of Lords was considering a provision of the Misuse of Drugs Act which required a defendant found in possession of a package containing drugs to prove that he did not know that it contained drugs. If the defendant failed to discharge that burden he would be found guilty of possession of drugs. The House of Lords held that this was an unjustfied infringement of the presumption of innocence. So, this provision was read as merely requiring the defendant to adduce evidence that he did not know the package contained drugs. The burden would then be on the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this evidence was untrue.

Those wanting to repeal the Human Rights Act (and withdrawn from the European Convention on Human Rights), whilst still adhering to the presumption of innocence, should think carefully about that.

In the meantime the outrage sparked by Boris's comments should be directed to adopting the proposal the Criminal Law Revision Committee made in 1972: that there should not be reverse burdens in English criminal law [4].

1 Woolmington v DPP [1935] AC 462 at 481

2 “The Presumption of Innocence in English Criminal Law” [1996] Criminal Law Review 306-317

3 Section 101 Magistrates' Courts Act 1981

4 Criminal Law Revision Committee, Eleventh Report, Evidence (General), Command Paper 4991 of 1972, para 140

Rajiv Shah is a PhD student in Law at the University of Cambridge.