[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/rlecon/v8y2012i1n11.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Subgame Perfect Plea Bargaining in Biform Judicial Contests

Author

Listed:
  • Schwarz Mordechai E.

    (The Open University of Israel)

Abstract
The judicial process is modeled as a biform contest. A sufficient condition for a non-empty core is provided, and it is shown that the effect of the severity of charges on the core is ambiguous. The practice of plea bargaining actually applies Moulin’s (1984) mechanism which non-cooperatively implements the Kalai-Smorodinsky (1975) bargain solution, implying that equilibrium plea deals are regressive. Namely, defendant’s gain and social cost from a guilty plea deal both increase with the severity of the crime. The charge reduction rate is inversely related to the defendant’s, and positively related to the prosecutor’s, “fear of ruin” index.

Suggested Citation

  • Schwarz Mordechai E., 2012. "Subgame Perfect Plea Bargaining in Biform Judicial Contests," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 297-330, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:8:y:2012:i:1:n:11
    DOI: 10.1515/1555-5879.1623
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/1555-5879.1623
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/1555-5879.1623?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1982. "Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 97-109, January.
    2. Svejnar, Jan, 1986. "Bargaining Power, Fear of Disagreement, and Wage Settlements: Theory and Evidence from U.S. Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1055-1078, September.
    3. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    4. Eddie Dekel & Michele Piccione, 2000. "Sequential Voting Procedures in Symmetric Binary Elections," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(1), pages 34-55, February.
    5. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Hirshleifer, Jack & Osborne, Evan, 2001. "Truth, Effort, and the Legal Battle," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 108(1-2), pages 169-195, July.
    7. Thorsten Bayindir-Upmann & Anke Gerber, 2003. "The Kalai-Smorodinsky Solution in Labor-Market Negotiations," CESifo Working Paper Series 941, CESifo.
    8. Hillman, Arye L & Katz, Eliakim, 1984. "Risk-Averse Rent Seekers and the Social Cost of Monopoly Power," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 94(373), pages 104-110, March.
    9. Baker, Scott & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2001. "Prosecutorial Resources, Plea Bargaining, and the Decision to Go to Trial," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(1), pages 149-167, April.
    10. Jérôme Foncel & Nicolas Treich, 2005. "Fear of Ruin," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 289-300, December.
    11. Reinganum, Jennifer F, 1988. "Plea Bargaining and Prosecutorial Discretion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 713-728, September.
    12. Nti, Kofi O, 1999. "Rent-Seeking with Asymmetric Valuations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 98(3-4), pages 415-430, March.
    13. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    14. Nash, John, 1950. "The Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 18(2), pages 155-162, April.
    15. Adam Brandenburger & Harborne Stuart, 2007. "Biform Games," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(4), pages 537-549, April.
    16. Bruce H. Kobayashi, 1992. "Deterrence with Multiple Defendants: An Explanation for "Unfair" Plea Bargains," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(4), pages 507-517, Winter.
    17. Tijs, S.H., 1990. "Big boss games, clan games and information market games," Other publications TiSEM 87762ef7-823f-451b-b5b3-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Luis Corchón & Matthias Dahm, 2010. "Foundations for contest success functions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(1), pages 81-98, April.
    19. Call, Jack E. & England, David E. & Talarico, Susette M., 1983. "Abolition of plea bargaining in the coast guard," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 351-358.
    20. Stergios Skaperdas, 1996. "Contest success functions (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(2), pages 283-290.
    21. Anbarci, Nejat & Skaperdas, Stergios & Syropoulos, Constantinos, 2002. "Comparing Bargaining Solutions in the Shadow of Conflict: How Norms against Threats Can Have Real Effects," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 1-16, September.
    22. Franzoni, Luigi Alberto, 1999. "Negotiated Enforcement and Credible Deterrence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(458), pages 509-535, October.
    23. Skaperdas, Stergios & Gan, Li, 1995. "Risk Aversion in Contests," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(431), pages 951-962, July.
    24. Okan Yilankaya, 2002. "A model of evidence production and optimal standard of proof and penalty in criminal trials," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 35(2), pages 385-409, May.
    25. Coughlan, Peter J., 2000. "In Defense of Unanimous Jury Verdicts: Mistrials, Communication, and Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(2), pages 375-393, June.
    26. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    27. Jeong-Yoo Kim, 2010. "Credible plea bargaining," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 279-293, June.
    28. Aumann, Robert J & Kurz, Mordecai, 1977. "Power and Taxes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(5), pages 1137-1161, July.
    29. McDonald, Ian M & Solow, Robert M, 1981. "Wage Bargaining and Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 896-908, December.
    30. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    31. Lucian Arye Bebchuk, 1984. "Litigation and Settlement under Imperfect Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(3), pages 404-415, Autumn.
    32. Joan Esteban & József Sákovics, 2002. "Endogenous bargaining power," Economics Working Papers 644, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    33. Millner, Edward L & Pratt, Michael D, 1991. "Risk Aversion and Rent-Seeking: An Extension and Some Experimental Evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 69(1), pages 81-92, February.
    34. Cooter, Robert D & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1989. "Economic Analysis of Legal Disputes and Their Resolution," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 1067-1097, September.
    35. Katz, Avery, 1988. "Judicial decisionmaking and litigation expenditure," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 127-143, December.
    36. Gil S. Epstein & Shmuel Nitzan, 2007. "Endogenous Public Policy and Contests," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-540-74818-2, December.
    37. Lott, John R, Jr, 1987. "Should the Wealthy Be Able to "Buy Justice"?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(6), pages 1307-1316, December.
    38. Grossman, Gene M & Katz, Michael L, 1983. "Plea Bargaining and Social Welfare," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 749-757, September.
    39. Harborne W. Stuart, Jr., 2005. "Biform Analysis of Inventory Competition," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 7(4), pages 347-359, July.
    40. Cornes, Richard & Hartley, Roger, 2003. "Risk Aversion, Heterogeneity and Contests," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 117(1-2), pages 1-25, October.
    41. Nitzan, Shmuel, 1994. "Modelling rent-seeking contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 41-60, May.
    42. Konrad, Kai A & Schlesinger, Harris, 1997. "Risk Aversion in Rent-Seeking and Rent-Augmenting Games," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(445), pages 1671-1683, November.
    43. Miceli, Thomas J, 1990. "Optimal Prosecution of Defendants Whose Guilt Is Uncertain," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 189-201, Spring.
    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. Schwarz Mordechai E., 2019. "From Jungle to Civilized Economy: The Power Foundation of Exchange Economy Equilibrium," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-14, June.
    2. Mordechai E. Schwarz, 2020. "A Master of Two Servants: The Effect of Separation of Powers on Public Accountability and Social Welfare," Proceedings of International Academic Conferences 10612466, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    3. Mordechai E. Schwarz, 2023. "A master of two servants: lessons from the israeli experience about the effect of separation of powers on public accountability and social welfare," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 59-87, March.

    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. Kobayashi, Bruce H. & Lott, John Jr., 1996. "In defense of criminal defense expenditures and plea bargaining," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 397-416, December.
    2. Konrad, Kai A., 2007. "Strategy in contests: an introduction [Strategie in Turnieren – eine Einführung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2007-01, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Andrew F. Daughety & Reinganum F. Reinganum, 2014. "Settlement and Trial: Selected Analyses of the Bargaining Environment," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 14-00005, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    4. Richard Cornes & Roger Hartley, 2012. "Risk aversion in symmetric and asymmetric contests," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(2), pages 247-275, October.
    5. Johannes Münster, 2006. "Contests with an unknown number of contestants," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 353-368, December.
    6. March, Christoph & Sahm, Marco, 2018. "Contests as selection mechanisms: The impact of risk aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 114-131.
    7. Yacov Tsur, 2017. "Bounding reasonable doubt: implications for plea bargaining," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 197-216, October.
    8. Yang, Erya, 2020. "Optimism and pessimism in bargaining and contests," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    9. Richard Cornes & Roger Hartley, 2012. "Loss Aversion in Contests," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1204, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    10. Chowdhury, Subhasish M. & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Turocy, Theodore L., 2014. "Overbidding and overspreading in rent-seeking experiments: Cost structure and prize allocation rules," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 224-238.
    11. Dickson, Alex & MacKenzie, Ian A. & Sekeris, Petros G., 2018. "Rent-seeking incentives in share contests," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 53-62.
    12. Alex Robson & Stergios Skaperdas, 2008. "Costly enforcement of property rights and the Coase theorem," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 36(1), pages 109-128, July.
    13. Brishti Guha, 2024. "Plea bargaining when juror effort is costly," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 78(3), pages 945-977, November.
    14. J. Amegashie, 2011. "Incomplete property rights and overinvestment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(1), pages 81-95, June.
    15. David Bjerk, 2021. "Socially Optimal Plea Bargaining With Costly Trials And Bayesian Juries," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 263-279, January.
    16. repec:elg:eechap:15325_3 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Alex Dickson & Ian A. MacKenzie & Petros G. Sekeris, 2016. "Sharing contests with general preferences," Discussion Papers Series 573, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    18. McBride, Michael & Skaperdas, Stergios & Tsai, Pi-Han, 2018. "Why go to court? Bargaining failure under the shadow of trial with complete information," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 151-168.
    19. Marco Sahm, 2017. "Risk Aversion and Prudence in Contests," CESifo Working Paper Series 6417, CESifo.
    20. Luke M. Froeb & Bernhard Ganglmair & Steven Tschantz, 2016. "Adversarial Decision Making: Choosing between Models Constructed by Interested Parties," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 527-548.
    21. Shupp, Robert & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Schmidt, David & Walker, James, 2013. "Resource allocation contests: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 257-267.

    More about this item

    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:bpj:rlecon:v:8:y:2012:i:1:n:11. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    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.