IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2111.10335.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Whose Bias?

Author

Listed:
  • Vasudha Jain
  • Mark Whitmeyer

Abstract

Law enforcement acquires costly evidence with the aim of securing the conviction of a defendant, who is convicted if a decision-maker's belief exceeds a certain threshold. Either law enforcement or the decision-maker is biased and is initially overconfident that the defendant is guilty. Although an innocent defendant always prefers an unbiased decision-maker, he may prefer that law enforcement have some bias to none. Nevertheless, fixing the level of bias, an innocent defendant may prefer that the decision-maker, not law enforcement, is biased.

Suggested Citation

  • Vasudha Jain & Mark Whitmeyer, 2021. "Whose Bias?," Papers 2111.10335, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2111.10335
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.10335
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yeon-Koo Che & Navin Kartik, 2009. "Opinions as Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(5), pages 815-860, October.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iatr74eao is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Emeric Henry, 2009. "Strategic Disclosure of Research Results: The Cost of Proving Your Honesty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(539), pages 1036-1064, July.
    4. Emeric Henry & Marco Ottaviani, 2019. "Research and the Approval Process: The Organization of Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(3), pages 911-955, March.
    5. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.
    6. Filip Matêjka & Alisdair McKay, 2015. "Rational Inattention to Discrete Choices: A New Foundation for the Multinomial Logit Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 272-298, January.
    7. Mike Felgenhauer & Petra Loerke, 2017. "Bayesian Persuasion With Private Experimentation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(3), pages 829-856, August.
    8. Shamena Anwar & Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2012. "The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 1017-1055.
    9. Alma Cohen & Crystal S. Yang, 2019. "Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 160-191, February.
    10. Mike Felgenhauer & Elisabeth Schulte, 2014. "Strategic Private Experimentation," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 74-105, November.
    11. Roland G. Fryer Jr., 2019. "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1210-1261.
    12. David S. Abrams & Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2012. "Do Judges Vary in Their Treatment of Race?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 347-383.
    13. Isabelle Brocas & Juan D. Carrillo, 2007. "Influence through ignorance," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(4), pages 931-947, December.
    14. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    15. Tanaya Devi & Roland G. Fryer Jr, 2020. "Policing the Police: The Impact of "Pattern-or-Practice" Investigations on Crime," NBER Working Papers 27324, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Matthew Gentzkow & Emir Kamenica, 2014. "Costly Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 457-462, May.
    17. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1gr6n3t28b94tafji6op8tlqs1 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Moses Shayo & Asaf Zussman, 2011. "Judicial Ingroup Bias in the Shadow of Terrorism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1447-1484.
    19. Herresthal, C., 2017. "Hidden Testing and Selective Disclosure of Evidence," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1712, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Felgenhauer, Mike, 2021. "Experimentation and manipulation with preregistration," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 400-408.
    2. Herresthal, Claudia, 2022. "Hidden testing and selective disclosure of evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    3. Hedlund, Jonas, 2017. "Bayesian persuasion by a privately informed sender," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 229-268.
    4. Alfredo Di Tillio & Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sørensen, 2021. "Strategic Sample Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(2), pages 911-953, March.
    5. Roc Armenter & Michèle Müller-Itten & Zachary Stangebye, 2020. "Rational Inattention via Ignorance Equivalence," Working Papers 20-24, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    6. Yichuan Lou, 2023. "Private Experimentation, Data Truncation, and Verifiable Disclosure," Papers 2305.04231, arXiv.org.
    7. Nicolás Grau & Damián Vergara, "undated". "A Simple Test for Prejudice in Decision Processes: The Prediction-Based Outcome Test," Working Papers wp493, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
    8. Roc Armenter & Michèle Müller-Itten & Zachary Strangebye, 2021. "Geometric Methods for Finite Rational Inattention," Working Papers 21-30, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    9. Mensch, Jeffrey, 2021. "Rational inattention and the monotone likelihood ratio property," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    10. Alonso, Ricardo & Câmara, Odilon, 2016. "Bayesian persuasion with heterogeneous priors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 672-706.
    11. Alfredo Di Tillio & Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sørensen, 2017. "Persuasion Bias in Science: Can Economics Help?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 266-304, October.
    12. Federico Echenique & Kevin He, 2024. "Screening p -hackers: Dissemination noise as bait," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 121(21), pages 2400787121-, May.
    13. Raphael Boleslavsky & Christopher Cotton, 2018. "Limited capacity in project selection: competition through evidence production," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(2), pages 385-421, March.
    14. Herresthal, C., 2017. "Hidden Testing and Selective Disclosure of Evidence," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1712, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    15. Mike Felgenhauer & Fangya Xu, 2021. "The Face Value Of Arguments With And Without Manipulation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(1), pages 277-293, February.
    16. Wei, Dong, 2021. "Persuasion under costly learning," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    17. Roc Armenter & Michele Muller-Itten & Zachary Stangebye, 2019. "Geometric Rational Inattention," 2019 Meeting Papers 1062, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Kevin Lang & Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer, 2020. "Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 68-89, Spring.
    19. Gregor Martin, 2015. "To Invite or Not to Invite a Lobby, That Is the Question," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 143-166, July.
    20. LaVoice, Jessica & Vamossy, Domonkos F., 2024. "Racial disparities in debt collection," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2111.10335. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.