Multi-court judging and judicial productivity in a career judiciary: Evidence from Nepal

The rotation of judges across courts of equal seniority is a core, yet understudied, feature of career judiciaries. We examine the consequences of such rotation-induced spreading of judges' yearly court attendance across multiple courts, termed multi-court judging, for judicial productivity at disposing cases. Drawing on judge-level panel data from resource-starved Nepal, where multi-court judging alleviates courts' staffing and case disposition concerns, we find that multi-court judging exhibits a statistically and economically significant negative effect on judicial productivity at case resolution. The uncovered result cannot be explained by selection on unobservables, is robust to adoption of a dynamic panel instrumental variable approach, obtains under alternative model specifications, and survives a series of robustness checks. By identifying a hitherto unidentified cost associated with inter-court transfer of judges, our analysis provides a novel layer of considerations about judicial behavior and performance in career judiciaries.