A careerist judge with two concerns

Ascension Andina-Diaz and José A. García-Martínez ()
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José A. García-Martínez: Departamento de Estudios Económicos y Financieros, Universidad Miguel Hernández

No 2016-02, Working Papers from Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effect of media coverage on the incentives of a careerist judge to act on her information. The novelty of our approach is to consider a judge who seeks to signal both \textit{expertise} and (absence of) \textit{bias}. To this, we incorporate three types of judges: the high quality or wise judge, the normal judge and the biased/lenient judge. Our results show that whether media coverage of judicial cases leads to better sentencing practices or not, deeply depend on the proportion of lenient judges in the population. In particular, we obtain that when this proportion is either too low or too high, media coverage does not affect a judge's behavior. However, her behavior if very different in one case than in the other. We also obtain that when the perceived proportion of lenient judges is neither too strong nor too weak, media coverage of judicial cases can induce a judge to act less on her information and to pass harsher sentences.

Keywords: Careerist judges; bias; transparency; media coverage; sentencing practices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 K40 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-law and nep-mic
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https://theeconomics.uma.es/malagawpseries/Papers/METCwp2016-2.pdf First version, 2016 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mal:wpaper:2016-2

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