Academic

Goeree & Yariv on Jury Deliberations

By Lawrence Solum

Jacob K. Goeree and Leeat Yariv (California Institute of Technology - Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences and California Institute of Technology - Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences) have posted An Experimental Study of Jury Deliberation on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

We study the effects of deliberation on collective decisions. In a series of experiments, we vary groups' preference distributions (between common and conflicting interests) and the institutions by which decisions are reached (simple majority, two-thirds majority, and unanimity). When deliberation is prohibited, different institutions generate signifi…cantly different outcomes, tracking the theoretical comparative statics. Deliberation, however, signi…ficantly diminishes institutional differences and uniformly improves efficiency. Furthermore, communication protocols exhibit an array of stable attributes: messages are public, consistently reveal private information, provide a good predictor for ultimate group choices, and follow particular (endogenous) sequencing.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on September 25, 2009 (boomark / email).