IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mhr/jinste/urnsici0932-4569(200509)1613_392pvtrqo_2.0.tx_2-g.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Perjury versus Truth Revelation: Quantity or Quality of Testimony

Author

Listed:
  • Winand Emons

Abstract

Witnesses often gain by slanting testimony. Courts try to elicit the truth with perjury rules. Perjury is not truth-revealing; truth revelation is, however, possible. With a truth-revealing mechanism the judge will get little testimony because the defendant will not present witnesses with unfavorable news; yet the testimony is of high quality. Under perjury the court gets a different amount of testimony with lower informational content. A court striving for precision prefers truth revelation to perjury; chances for the defendant to prevail are the same. Truth revelation thus dominates perjury even when the different quantity of testimony is allowed for.

Suggested Citation

  • Winand Emons, 2005. "Perjury versus Truth Revelation: Quantity or Quality of Testimony," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 161(3), pages 392-410, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200509)161:3_392:pvtrqo_2.0.tx_2-g
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/perjury-versus-truth-revelation-quantity-or-quality-of-testimony-101628093245605774259282
    Download Restriction: Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard A. Posner, 1999. "The Law and Economics of the Economic Expert Witness," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 91-99, Spring.
    2. Roger B. Myerson, 1983. "Bayesian Equilibrium and Incentive-Compatibility: An Introduction," Discussion Papers 548, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    3. Hyun Song Shin, 1998. "Adversarial and Inquisitorial Procedures in Arbitration," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(2), pages 378-405, Summer.
    4. Lipman Barton L. & Seppi Duane J., 1995. "Robust Inference in Communication Games with Partial Provability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 370-405, August.
    5. Bernardo, Antonio E & Talley, Eric & Welch, Ivo, 2000. "A Theory of Legal Presumptions," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 1-49, April.
    6. Robert Cooter & Winand Emons, 2003. "Truth-Revealing Mechanisms for Courts," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 159(2), pages 259-279, June.
    7. Emons, Winand, 1994. "The provision of environmental protection measures under incomplete information: An introduction to the theory of mechanism design," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 479-491, December.
    8. Paul Milgrom & John Roberts, 1986. "Relying on the Information of Interested Parties," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 18-32, Spring.
    9. Robert Cooter & Winand Emons, 2004. "Truth-Bonding and Other Truth-Revealing Mechanisms for Courts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 307-327, May.
    10. Robert Thornton & John Ward, 1999. "The Economist in Tort Litigation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 101-112, Spring.
    11. Daughety, Andrew F & Reinganum, Jennifer F, 2000. "On the Economics of Trials: Adversarial Process, Evidence, and Equilibrium Bias," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 365-394, October.
    12. Michael J. Mandel, 1999. "Going for the Gold: Economists as Expert Witnesses," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 113-120, Spring.
    13. Miller, James D., 2001. "Perjury and information weighting," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 329-341, September.
    14. Winand Emons & Joel Sobel, 1991. "On the Effectiveness of Liability Rules when Agents are not Identical," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 375-390.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Cooter & Winand Emons, 2004. "Truth-Bonding and Other Truth-Revealing Mechanisms for Courts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 307-327, May.
    2. Matthew Braham & Friedel Bolle, 2006. "A difficulty with oaths: On trust, trustworthiness, and signalling," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 219-232, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert Cooter & Winand Emons, 2003. "Truth-Revealing Mechanisms for Courts," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 159(2), pages 259-279, June.
    2. Robert Cooter & Winand Emons, 2004. "Truth-Bonding and Other Truth-Revealing Mechanisms for Courts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 307-327, May.
    3. Cooter, Robert D. & Emons, Winand, 2001. "Truth-Bonding and Other Truth-Revealing Mechanisms for Courts [technical version]," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt3587v9sv, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    4. Yee, Kenton K., 2008. "Dueling experts and imperfect verification," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 246-255, December.
    5. Bull, Jesse & Watson, Joel, 2004. "Evidence disclosure and verifiability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-31, September.
    6. Demougin, Dominique & Fluet, Claude, 2006. "Preponderance of evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 963-976, May.
    7. Che, Yeon-Koo & Severinov, Sergei, 2007. "Lawyer Advising in Evidence Disclosure," MPRA Paper 6101, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Claude Fluet, 2009. "Accuracy Versus Falsification Costs: The Optimal Amount of Evidence under Different Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 134-156, May.
    9. Fluet, Claude, 2020. "L'économie de la preuve judiciaire," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 96(4), pages 585-620, Décembre.
    10. Chulyoung Kim, 2014. "Adversarial and Inquisitorial Procedures with Information Acquisition," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(4), pages 767-803.
    11. Emons, Winand & Fluet, Claude, 2005. "The Optimal Amount of Falsified Testimony," CEPR Discussion Papers 5124, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Dominique Demougin & Claude Fluet, 2008. "Rules of proof, courts, and incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(1), pages 20-40, March.
    13. Cheryl Boudreau & Mathew D. McCubbins, 2008. "Nothing But the Truth? Experiments on Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, and Decision Making," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(4), pages 751-789, December.
    14. Turkay, Evsen, 2011. "Evidence disclosure and severity of punishments," MPRA Paper 31504, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Claude Fluet & Thomas Lanzi, 2021. "Cross-Examination," Working Papers of BETA 2021-40, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    16. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2019. "Strategic communication with reporting costs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(3), pages 341-363, October.
    17. Nicola Gennaioli & Enrico Perotti, 2009. "Standardized enforcement: Access to justice vs contractual innovation," Economics Working Papers 1329, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jun 2012.
    18. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Goltsman, Maria & Mukherjee, Arijit, 2018. "On the optimality of diverse expert panels in persuasion games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 345-363.
    19. Alice Guerra & Barbara Luppi & Francesco Parisi, 2022. "Do presumptions of negligence incentivize optimal precautions?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 349-368, December.
    20. Yves Oytana & Nathalie Chappe, 2018. "Expert opinion in a tort litigation game," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 67-107, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    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:sici:0932-4569(200509)161:3_392:pvtrqo_2.0.tx_2-g. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.