Information Aggregation in Standing and Ad Hoc Committees

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The Results of Deliberation

When evaluating whether to sue, prosecute, settle, or plead, trial lawyers must predict the future—they need to estimate how likely they are to win a given case in a given jurisdiction. Social scientists have used mock juror studies to produce a vast body of literature showing how different variables influence juror decision making. But few of these studies account for jury deliberation, so they present an impoverished picture of how these effects play out in trials and are of limited usefulness. This Article helps lawyers better predict the future by presenting a novel computer model that extrapolates findings about jurors to juries, showing how variables of interest affect the decisions not only of individuals but also of deliberative bodies. The Article demonstrates the usefulness of the model by applying it to data from an empirical study of the factors that influence juror decisions in acquaintance rape cases. This application first elucidates a tension in criminal law: even if a substantial majority of jurors in a community would vote to convict a defendant, a majority of juries might still acquit. It also demonstrates that certain legal reforms will have a meaningful effect in some areas of the country but not others, suggesting that rape law reform should occur at a local, not national, level

Accuracy of Verdicts under Different Jury Sizes and Voting Rules

Juries are a fundamental element of the criminal justice system. In this article, we model jury decision making as a function of two institutional variables: jury size and voting requirement. We expose the critical interdependence of these two elements in minimizing the probabilities of wrongful convictions, of wrongful acquittals, and of hung juries. We find that the use of either large nonunanimous juries or small unanimous juries offers alternative ways to maximize the accuracy of verdicts while preserving the functionality of juries. Our framework, which lends support to the elimination of the unanimity requirement in the presence of large juries, helps appraise US Supreme Court decisions and state legal reforms that have transformed the structure of American juries

Optimal Sequential Decision with Limited Attention

We consider a dynamic model of information acquisition. Before taking an action, a decision maker may direct her limited attention to collecting different types of evidence that support alternative actions. The optimal policy combines three strategies: (i) immediate action, (ii) a contradictory strategy seeking to challenge the prior belief, and (iii) a confirmatory strategy seeking to confirm the prior. The model produces a rich dynamic stochastic choice pattern as well as predictions in settings such as jury deliberation and political media choice

Understanding the Jury with the Help of Social Science

A Review of Inside the Jury by Reid Hastie, Steven Penrod and Nancy Penningto

Political Economy of Committee Voting and Its Application

This dissertation consists of three essays on information aggregation in committees and its application. The first essay analyzes how the distribution of votes affects the accuracy of group decisions. In a weighted voting system, votes are typically assigned based on the criteria that are unrelated to the voters’ ability to make a correct judgment. I introduce an information aggregation model in which voters are identical except for voting shares. If the information is free, the optimal weight distribution is equal weighting. When acquiring information is costly, by contrast, I show that the accuracy of group decisions may be higher under some weighted majority rules than under unweighted majority rule. I characterize the equilibrium and find the optimal weight distribution to maximize the accuracy of group decisions. Asymmetric weight distributions may be optimal when the cost of improving signal is moderately high. The second essay analyzes how intergenerational family transfers can be sustained. Why are generous transfers from the younger to the older generations made in some families and not in others? My paper argues that differences in intergenerational dependence are due to variation in community networks. My analysis of the sustainability of intergenerational transfers posits game theoretical models of overlapping generations in which breadwinners make transfers to their parents and children. A novel feature of my models is that there is a local community that may supply information about its members past behaviors. I demonstrate that an efficient level of intergenerational transfers can be sustained if neighbors gossip about each other. The third essay, co-authored with Fuhito Kojima, investigates a jury decision when hung juries and retrials are possible. When jurors in subsequent trials know that previous trials resulted in hung juries, informative voting can be an equilibrium if and only if the accuracy of signals for innocence and guilt are exactly identical. Moreover, if jurors are informed of numerical split of votes in previous trials, informative voting is not an equilibrium regardless of signal accuracy.Governmen