IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mhr/jinste/urndoi10.1628-jite-2023-0017.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Plaintiff Favoritism in Judicial Cost-Shifting Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Keren Weinshall
  • Ifat Taraboulos

Abstract

Are judges inclined to favor plaintiffs over defendants? We analyze the relationships between win rates and cost-shifting outcomes in the Israeli loser-pays regime. Though qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews with judges assures us that litigants are equal in the cost-shifting arena, quantitative analysis portrays evidence to the contrary: judges allocate more and higher costs in favor of prevailing plaintiffs than defendants. Results are replicated in three datasets: a sample of all civil cases, small claims between individuals, and claims with matching counterclaims. We discuss explanations for this implicit pro-plaintiff effect in cost-shifting and implications for a possible broader pro-plaintiff bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Keren Weinshall & Ifat Taraboulos, 2023. "Plaintiff Favoritism in Judicial Cost-Shifting Decisions," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 179(1), pages 156-189.
    • Handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:doi:10.1628/jite-2023-0017
    DOI: 10.1628/jite-2023-0017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/plaintiff-favoritism-in-judicial-cost-shifting-decisions-101628jite-2023-0017
    Download Restriction: Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1628/jite-2023-0017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    judicialbehavior; cost-shifting; judicialbias; civillitigation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:doi:10.1628/jite-2023-0017. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Wolpert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/jite .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.