What is the impact of caseload on judicial decision-making? Is increasing judicial staff effective in improving judicial services? To address these questions, we exploit a natural, near-randomized experiment in the Israeli judiciary. In 2012, six senior registrars were appointed in two of the...

Victims want to collect damages from injurers. Cases differ with respect to the judgment. Attorneys observe the expected judgment, clients do not. Victims need an attorney to sue; defense attorneys reduce the probability that the plaintiff prevails. Plaintiffs' attorneys offer contingent fees...

Judges and juries frequently must decide, knowing that they do not know everything that would be relevant for deciding the case. The law uses two related institutions for enabling courts to nonetheless decide the case: the standard of proof, and the burden of proof. In this paper, we contrast a...

What is the impact of caseload on judicial decision-making? Is increasing judicial staff effective in improving judicial services? To address these questions, we exploit a natural, near-randomized experiment in the Israeli judiciary. In 2012, six senior registrars were appointed in two of the...

Because verdicts are typically the more costly resolution of legal disputes, most governments are interested in high settlement rates. In this paper, we use a unique dataset of 860 case records from a German trial court to explore which factors have a significant impact on the decision to settle...

Historically, people have often expressed negative feelings toward speculators, a sentiment that might have even been reinforced since the latest financial crisis, during which taxpayer money was warranted or spent to bail out reckless investors. In this paper, we conjecture that judges may also...

The decision making of judges is prone to error and misapprehension. Consequently, the prevailing literature ties the economic function of courts to dispute resolution and minimization of rule making costs. In contrast to previous research, this analysis applies a contract theoretic perspective...

Victims want to collect damages from injurers. Cases differ with respect to the judgment. Attorneys observe the expected judgment, clients do not. Victims need an attorney to sue; defense attorneys reduce the probability that the plaintiff prevails. Plaintiffs' attorneys offer contingent fees...

American households increasingly rely on employer-sponsored defined contribution retirement plans to fund consumption in retirement. I show that an important factor that impacts these plans is litigation risk. Using a new database of over 35,000 plans covering more than $5 trillion in assets, I...

Does the macroeconomic environment affect judicial decisions and thereby shape the law? Even though the normative significance of understanding judicial decision-making is undeniable, empirical research into how judges make decisions is woefully incomplete. This is the first Article to...