IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pen/papers/15-029.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Matching with Moral Hazard: Assigning Attorneys to Indigent Defendants

Author

Listed:
  • Behrang Kamali-Shahdadi

    (Department of Economics, TeIas Institute)

Abstract

Each year, over a hundred thousand defendants who are too poor to pay for a lawyer are assigned counsel. Existing procedures for making such assignments are essentially random and have been criticized for giving indigent defendants no say in choosing the counsel they are assigned to. In this paper, we model the problem of assigning counsel to indigent defendants as a matching problem. A novel aspect of this matching problem is the moral hazard component on the part of counsel. Within the model, we show that holding the total expenditure for counsel fixed and changing the matching procedure to accommodate defendants' and attorneys' preferences will make defendants worse off. More precisely, if we switch from random matching to stable matching, defendants become worse off because stable matching exacerbates the moral hazard problem on the part of counsel. In addition, we find conditions on reservation wages of attorneys under which random matching is the efficient way to allocate defendants to counsel.

Suggested Citation

  • Behrang Kamali-Shahdadi, 2015. "Matching with Moral Hazard: Assigning Attorneys to Indigent Defendants," PIER Working Paper Archive 15-029, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 02 Sep 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:pen:papers:15-029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/filevault/15-029.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Radha Iyengar, 2007. "An Analysis of the Performance of Federal Indigent Defense Counsel," NBER Working Papers 13187, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    3. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "Repeated Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(1), pages 69-76, January.
    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. Sebastian Koehne & Nicola Pavoni & Arpad Abraham, 2011. "Optimal Income Taxation with Asset Accumulation," 2011 Meeting Papers 1161, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Nahum D. Melumad, 1989. "Asymmetric information and the termination of contracts in agencies," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(2), pages 733-753, March.
    3. Hugo Hopenhayn & Arantxa Jarque, 2010. "Unobservable Persistent Productivity and Long Term Contracts," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(2), pages 333-349, April.
    4. Pierre Jinghong Liang, 2000. "Accounting Recognition, Moral Hazard, and Communication," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(3), pages 458-490, September.
    5. Chade, Hector & Kovrijnykh, Natalia, 2016. "Delegated information acquisition with moral hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 55-92.
    6. Raith, Michael, 2012. "Optimal incentives and the time dimension of performance measurement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(6), pages 2158-2189.
    7. Florian Hoffmann & Roman Inderst & Marcus Opp, 2021. "Only Time Will Tell: A Theory of Deferred Compensation [Motivating Innovation in Newly Public Firms]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(3), pages 1253-1278.
    8. Alberto Bisin & Piero Gottardi & Adriano A. Rampini, 2008. "Managerial Hedging and Portfolio Monitoring," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 158-209, March.
    9. Dionne, Georges & Harrington, Scott, 2017. "Insurance and Insurance Markets," Working Papers 17-2, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    10. Liang, Yong & Sun, Peng & Tang, Runyu & Zhang, Chong, 2023. "Efficient resource allocation contracts to reduce adverse events," Other publications TiSEM 0bcf44d9-d0ac-4231-beaf-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    11. Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1987. "Le risque moral dans la relation de mandat," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 38(1), pages 5-24.
    12. Damien S Eldridge, 2007. "A Shirking Theory of Referrals," Working Papers 2007.05, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    13. Jun Chen & Zhiqi Chen, 2011. "The quiet life of a monopolist: The efficiency losses of monopoly reconsidered," Frontiers of Economics in China, Springer;Higher Education Press, vol. 6(3), pages 389-412, September.
    14. Arantxa Jarque, 2008. "Optimal CEO compensation and stock options," Working Papers. Serie EC 2008-04, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    15. Ábrahám, Árpád & Koehne, Sebastian & Pavoni, Nicola, 2011. "On the first-order approach in principal-agent models with hidden borrowing and lending," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(4), pages 1331-1361, July.
    16. Hugo Hopenhayn & Arantxa Jarque, 2006. "Moral Hazard and Persistence," 2006 Meeting Papers 670, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Alexander Monge-Naranjo & Javier Cascante & Luis J. Hall, 2001. "Enforcement, Contract Design, and Default: Exploring the Financial Markets of Costa Rica," Research Department Publications 3126, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    18. Zhao, Rui R., 2007. "Dynamic risk-sharing with two-sided moral hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 601-640, September.
    19. Abraham Arpad & Nicola Pavoni, 2004. "Efficient Allocations, with Moral Hazard and Hidden Borrowing and Lending," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000138, UCLA Department of Economics.
    20. Macera, Rosario, 2018. "Present or future incentives? On the optimality of fixed wages with moral hazard," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 129-144.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Matching; Moral Hazard; Contract; Indigent Defense;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory

    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:pen:papers:15-029. 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: Administrator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deupaus.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.