IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fiu/wpaper/1801.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Statistical Evidence and the Problem of Robust Litigation

Author

Listed:
  • Jesse Bull

    (Department of Economics, Florida International University)

  • Joel Watson

    (Department of Economics, UC San Diego)

Abstract

We develop a model of statistical evidence with a sophisticated Bayesian fact-finder. The context is litigation, where a litigant (defendant or plaintiff) may disclose hard evidence and a jury (the fact-finder) interprets it. In addition to hard evidence, the litigant has private unverifiable information. We study the robustness of the parties' reasoning regarding the legal fundamentals and the litigant's strategic behavior. The litigant's choice of whether to disclose hard evidence entails two channels of information: the face-value signal of the hard evidence disclosure (relating to the probabilities that the hard evidence exists in different states of the world) and as a possible signal of the litigant's private information. Our results suggest that in some situations, a desire for robust reasoning about evidence would lead the court to restrict the admissibility of some relevant evidence. The modeling exercise provides support for the Federal Rules of Evidence Rules 403 and 404, along with general conclusions about evidence policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesse Bull & Joel Watson, 2018. "Statistical Evidence and the Problem of Robust Litigation," Working Papers 1801, Florida International University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:fiu:wpaper:1801
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.fiu.edu/research/pdfs/2018_working_papers/1801.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Claude Fluet & Thomas Lanzi, 2018. "Adversarial Persuasion with Cross-Examination," Cahiers de recherche 1811, Centre de recherche sur les risques, les enjeux économiques, et les politiques publiques.
    2. Watson, Joel, 1996. "Information Transmission When the Informed Party Is Confused," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 143-161, January.
    3. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    4. Bull, Jesse & Watson, Joel, 2007. "Hard evidence and mechanism design," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 75-93, January.
    5. Jesse Bull, 2009. "Costly Evidence And Systems Of Fact‐Finding," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 103-125, April.
    6. , & ,, 2012. "Implementation with evidence," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(2), May.
    7. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    8. Bull, Jesse & Watson, Joel, 2004. "Evidence disclosure and verifiability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-31, September.
    9. Hedlund, Jonas, 2017. "Bayesian persuasion by a privately informed sender," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 229-268.
    10. Benjamin Lester & Nicola Persico & Ludo Visschers, 2012. "Information Acquisition and the Exclusion of Evidence in Trials," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 163-182.
    11. Bull Jesse, 2008. "Mechanism Design with Moderate Evidence Cost," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-20, May.
    12. Schrag, Joel & Scotchmer, Suzanne, 1994. "Crime and Prejudice: The Use of Character Evidence in Criminal Trials," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 319-342, October.
    13. Shin Hyun Song, 1994. "The Burden of Proof in a Game of Persuasion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 253-264, October.
    14. Banks, Jeffrey S & Sobel, Joel, 1987. "Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 647-661, May.
    15. 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.
    16. Yeon-Koo Che & Sergei Severinov, 2017. "Disclosure and Legal Advice," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 188-225, May.
    17. Daughety, Andrew F & Reinganum, Jennifer F, 2000. "On the Economics of Trials: Adversarial Process, Evidence, and Equilibrium Bias," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 365-394, October.
    18. Jesse Bull, 2013. "Interrogation and Evidence Fabrication," Working Papers 1303, Florida International University, Department of Economics.
    19. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00754592 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    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. Aditya Kuvalekar & João Ramos & Johannes Schneider, 2023. "The wrong kind of information," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 54(2), pages 360-384, June.
    2. Claude Fluet & Thomas Lanzi, 2021. "Cross-Examination," Working Papers of BETA 2021-40, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    3. Aditya Kuvalekar & Jo~ao Ramos & Johannes Schneider, 2021. "The Wrong Kind of Information," Papers 2111.04172, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2022.
    4. Lundberg, Alexander & Mungan, Murat, 2022. "The effect of evidentiary rules on conviction rates," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 563-576.
    5. Claude Fluet & Thomas Lanzi, 2018. "Adversarial Persuasion with Cross-Examination," Cahiers de recherche 1811, Centre de recherche sur les risques, les enjeux économiques, et les politiques publiques.

    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. Ben-Porath, Elchanan & Lipman, Barton L., 2012. "Implementation with partial provability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(5), pages 1689-1724.
    2. Yeon-Koo Che & Sergei Severinov, 2017. "Disclosure and Legal Advice," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 188-225, May.
    3. Turkay, Evsen, 2011. "Evidence disclosure and severity of punishments," MPRA Paper 31504, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Eduardo Perez-Richet, 2014. "Interim Bayesian Persuasion: First Steps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 469-474, May.
    5. Claude Fluet & Thomas Lanzi, 2021. "Cross-Examination," Working Papers of BETA 2021-40, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    6. Jeanne Hagenbach & Frédéric Koessler & Eduardo Perez‐Richet, 2014. "Certifiable Pre‐Play Communication: Full Disclosure," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(3), pages 1093-1131, May.
    7. Kolotilin, Anton, 2015. "Experimental design to persuade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 215-226.
    8. Yves Oytana & Nathalie Chappe, 2018. "Expert opinion in a tort litigation game," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 67-107, August.
    9. Matthias Lang, 2020. "Mechanism Design with Narratives," CESifo Working Paper Series 8502, CESifo.
    10. Mathis, Jérôme, 2008. "Full revelation of information in Sender-Receiver games of persuasion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 571-584, November.
    11. Hedlund, Jonas, 2017. "Bayesian persuasion by a privately informed sender," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 229-268.
    12. Forges, Francoise & Koessler, Frederic, 2005. "Communication equilibria with partially verifiable types," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(7), pages 793-811, November.
    13. Alessandro Ispano & Péter Vida, 2020. "Custodial Interrogations," THEMA Working Papers 2020-05, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    14. Eduardo Perez & Delphine Prady, 2012. "Complicating to Persuade?," Working Papers hal-03583827, HAL.
    15. Suvorov, Anton & van de Ven, Jeroen, 2009. "Discretionary rewards as a feedback mechanism," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 665-681, November.
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3709dm0u7h9t9qlfe9vrqtn8ed is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Dominique Demougin & Claude Fluet, 2008. "Rules of proof, courts, and incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(1), pages 20-40, March.
    18. Navin Kartik, 2009. "Strategic Communication with Lying Costs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(4), pages 1359-1395.
    19. Boleslavsky, Raphael & Lewis, Tracy R., 2016. "Evolving influence: Mitigating extreme conflicts of interest in advisory relationships," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 110-134.
    20. Bull, Jesse & Watson, Joel, 2004. "Evidence disclosure and verifiability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-31, September.
    21. Shaofei Jiang, 2019. "Disclosure Games with Large Evidence Spaces," Papers 1910.13633, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.

    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:fiu:wpaper:1801. 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: Sheng Guo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/defiuus.html .

    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.