Wrongful Conviction, Persuasion and Loss Aversion

Matthew Robertson

CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA

Abstract: When can a prosecutor persuade a loss-averse judge to increase her rate of conviction? Motivated by empirical evidence, I study a model of persuasion in which the loss a judge incurs from wrongful conviction looms larger than the gain from a just verdict. I show that, surprisingly, the prosecutor benefits from persuasion even when the judge is extremely loss-averse. However, a necessary condition is that the prosecutor does not underestimate the judge’s loss aversion. I draw on experimental findings to quantify the effectiveness of persuasion under loss aversion. JEL classification numbers: D72 ; D82 ; D91 ; K40

Keywords: information design; loss aversion; wrongful conviction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-law
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:wcreta:48

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