Simultaneous Decision Making of Juries: Evidence From the Paris Labor Court

This paper analyzes the decisions made by juries at the Paris Labor Court. These juries (made up of two judges representing workers' unions and two representing employers' federations) decide how much money defendants (employers) should pay to plaintiffs (employees). Multiple cases are typically examined during a court session, and the jury then decides simultaneously how each plaintiff is to be compensated after all cases have been heard. We exploit the quasi-random assignment of cases and juries to sessions and estimate simultaneous Tobit models, accounting thereby for the mass at zero of the awarded amount and the simultaneous nature of the decision process. The awarded amount is not affected by the (average) amount awarded to other plaintiffs, suggesting that in this respect a simultaneous decision process is preferable to a sequential one (wherein decisions have been shown to be affected by path dependency). Furthermore, the awarded amount is significantly higher when one or both employee representatives are left-wing orientated, or if the jury is headed by a judge from a workers' union. Finally, plaintiffs get less money when they are examined in sessions containing relatively many cases.