IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/empleg/v6y2009i4p793-817.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competition in the Courtroom: When Does Expert Testimony Improve Jurors' Decisions?

Author

Listed:
  • Cheryl Boudreau
  • Mathew D. McCubbins

Abstract

Many scholars lament the increasing complexity of jury trials and question whether the testimony of competing experts helps unsophisticated jurors to make informed decisions. In this article, we analyze experimentally the effects that the testimony of competing experts has on (1) sophisticated versus unsophisticated subjects' decisions and (2) subjects' decisions on difficult versus easy problems. Our results demonstrate that competing expert testimony, by itself, does not help unsophisticated subjects to behave as though they are sophisticated, nor does it help subjects make comparable decisions on difficult and easy problems. When we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying or a threat of verification) on the competing experts, we observe such dramatic improvements in unsophisticated subjects' decisions that the gap between their decisions and those of sophisticated subjects closes. We find similar results when the competing experts exchange reasons for why their statements may be correct. However, additional institutions and the experts' exchange of reasons are less effective at closing the gap between subjects' decisions on difficult versus easy problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Cheryl Boudreau & Mathew D. McCubbins, 2009. "Competition in the Courtroom: When Does Expert Testimony Improve Jurors' Decisions?," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(4), pages 793-817, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:6:y:2009:i:4:p:793-817
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01160.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01160.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01160.x?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lupia,Arthur & McCubbins,Mathew D., 1998. "The Democratic Dilemma," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521584487.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Tomz, Michael & Wittenberg, Jason & King, Gary, 2003. "Clarify: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 8(i01).
    5. 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.
    6. Froeb, Luke M & Kobayashi, Bruce H, 1996. "Naive, Biased, Yet Bayesian: Can Juries Interpret Selectively Produced Evidence?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 257-276, April.
    7. Lupia,Arthur & McCubbins,Mathew D., 1998. "The Democratic Dilemma," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521585934.
    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. Aimone, Jason A. & Hudja, Stanton & Law, Wilson & North, Charles M. & Ralston, Jason & Rentschler, Lucas, 2023. "An experimental exploration of reasonable doubt," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 873-886.
    2. Dain C. Donelson & Justin J. Hopkins, 2016. "Large Market Declines and Securities Litigation: Implications for Disclosing Adverse Earnings News," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(11), pages 3183-3198, November.
    3. Albertazzi, Andrea & Ploner, Matteo & Vaccari, Federico, 2021. "Welfare in Experimental News Markets," SocArXiv 5j2w8, Center for Open Science.

    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. 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.
    2. Minozzi, William & Woon, Jonathan, 2016. "Competition, preference uncertainty, and jamming: A strategic communication experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 97-114.
    3. Fluet, Claude, 2020. "L'économie de la preuve judiciaire," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 96(4), pages 585-620, Décembre.
    4. Lee, Taeku & Oliver, J. Eric, 2002. "Public Opinion and the Politics of America's Obesity Epidemic," Working Paper Series rwp02-017, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    5. Baum, Matt, 2000. "A Paradox of Public Opinion: Why a Less Interested Public is More Attentive to War," Institute for Social Science Research, Working Paper Series qt7200v97q, Institute for Social Science Research, UCLA.
    6. William Minozzi & Jonathan Woon, 2013. "Lying aversion, lobbying, and context in a strategic communication experiment," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 309-337, July.
    7. Swank Otto H., 2000. "Seeking information: the role of information providers in the policy decision process," Public Economics 0004004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Kim, Chulyoung, 2016. "Adversarial bias, litigation, and the Daubert test: An economic approach," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 67-75.
    9. Schläpfer, Felix & Schmitt, Marcel & Roschewitz, Anna, 2008. "Competitive politics, simplified heuristics, and preferences for public goods," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 574-589, April.
    10. Robert Dur & Otto H. Swank, 2005. "Producing and Manipulating Information," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(500), pages 185-199, January.
    11. Yee, Kenton K., 2008. "Dueling experts and imperfect verification," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 246-255, December.
    12. Cheryl Boudreau & Mathew D. McCubbins & Daniel B. Rodriguez & Nicholas Weller, 2010. "Making Talk Cheap (and Problems Easy): How Legal and Political Institutions Can Facilitate Consensus," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(4), pages 868-885, December.
    13. Tsuyoshi Hatori & Hayeong Jeong & Kiyoshi Kobayashi, 2014. "Regional learning and trust formation," Chapters, in: Charlie Karlsson & Börje Johansson & Kiyoshi Kobayashi & Roger R. Stough (ed.), Knowledge, Innovation and Space, chapter 8, pages 180-212, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Schlapfer, Felix & Schmitt, Marcel, 2007. "Anchors, endorsements, and preferences: A field experiment," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 229-243, September.
    15. Cheryl Boudreau, 2012. "Greater than the sum of their parts? When combinations of institutions improve citizens’ decisions," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(1), pages 90-109, January.
    16. Robert A.J. Dur & Otto H. Swank, 2001. "Producing and Manipulating Information: Private Information Providers versus Public Information Providers," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 01-052/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. Giovannoni, Francesco & Seidmann, Daniel J., 2007. "Secrecy, two-sided bias and the value of evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 296-315, May.
    18. Frisell, Lars, 2000. "Taking Advice from Imperfectly Informed Lobbyists: When to Match Hawks with Hawks," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 355, Stockholm School of Economics.
    19. Turkay, Evsen, 2011. "Evidence disclosure and severity of punishments," MPRA Paper 31504, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Anders Gustafsson, 2019. "Busy doing nothing: why politicians implement inefficient policies," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 282-299, September.

    More about this item

    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:wly:empleg:v:6:y:2009:i:4:p:793-817. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1740-1461 .

    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.