Modeling a satisficing judge

Christoph Engel and Werner Gueth
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Werner Gueth: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Germany LUISS Guido Carli, Rome, Italy

Rationality and Society, 2018, vol. 30, issue 2, 220-246

Abstract: Decision-makers often mean to react to the behavior of others, knowing that they only imperfectly observe them. Rational choice theory posits that they should weigh false positive versus false negative choices, and assess possible outcomes and their probabilities, if necessary, attaching subjective values to them. We argue that this recommendation is not only utterly unrealistic but highly error prone. We contrast it with an approach inspired by satisficing, where the decision-maker contents herself with gauging her confidence in not making too big a mistake by adopting one course of action. We model the competing approaches, using judicial decision-making as a graphic illustration.

Keywords: Asymmetric and private information; criteria for decision-making under risk and uncertainty; distribution; litigation process; mechanism design; noncooperative games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Related works:
Working Paper: Modeling a Satisficing Judge (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:30:y:2018:i:2:p:220-246

DOI: 10.1177/1043463118767406

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