A Note on: Jury Size and the Free Rider Problem

Parimal Bag, Paul Levine () and Christopher Spencer

No 1705, School of Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, University of Surrey

Abstract: This note reassesses the basic result in Mukhopadhaya (2003) that, when jurors may acquire costly signals about a defendant’s guilt, with a larger jury size the probability of reaching a correct verdict may in fact fall, contrary to the Condorcet Jury Theorem. We show that if the jurors coordinate on any one of a number of (equally plausible) asymmetric equilibria other than the symmetric equilibrium considered by Mukhopadhaya, the probability of accuracy reaches a maximum for a particular jury size and remains unchanged with larger juries, thus mitigating Mukhopadhaya’s result somewhat. However, the case for limiting the jury size a recommendation by Mukhoapdhaya gains additional grounds if one shifts the focus from maximizing the probability of reaching a correct verdict to the maximization of the overall social surplus, measured by the expected benefits of jury decisions less the expected costs of acquiring signals.

Keywords: jury size; free rider problem; Condorcet Jury Theorem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2005-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
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Journal Article: A note on: jury size and the free rider problem (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sur:surrec:1705

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