Can Words Get in the Way? The Effect of Deliberation in Collective Decision Making

Matias Iaryczower, Xiaoxia Shi and Matthew Shum

Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 126, issue 2, 688 - 734

Abstract: We quantify the effect of deliberation on the decisions of US appellate courts. We estimate a model in which strategic judges communicate before casting their votes and then compare the probability of mistakes in the court with deliberation with a counterfactual of no communication. The model has multiple equilibria, and preferences and information parameters are only partially identified. We find that there is a range of parameters in the identified set--when judges tend to disagree ex ante or their private information is imprecise--in which deliberation can be beneficial; otherwise, deliberation reduces the effectiveness of the court.

Date: 2018
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