Female judges and in-group bias in labor courts

Does judge gender influence the outcome of sentences in labor courts? We address this question using data on judges, defendants (firms), and plaintiffs (workers) from labor court cases of SA£o Paulo state, Brazil, spanning from 2006 to 2015. Exploiting the random assignment of judges to cases, we document that female judges are more likely to rule in favor of companies than male judges, and that this gap is larger when the plaintiff is female.