Volume 14, Issue 1 - First Conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Europe

This paper estimates the effect that wealth and power have on criminal justice outcomes by exploiting the random matching of drivers to pedestrians in traffic accidents. If justice is impartial, we should observe the same share of rich offenders both for poor and rich victims, conditional on location and time. Rich victims act as a control group to estimate the proportion of missing rich offenders whose victims are less powerful. I use this estimation approach on data from Russia, and find that its justice system is not impartial. The same approach can be applied not only to other countries but also to other characteristics that should be irrelevant to judicial outcomes in an impartial legal system, such as race and gender.

The question whether political preferences of EU Member States play a role in the decision-making of the members of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has so far gone largely unanswered in the literature. This paper formally tests the hypothesis that the political preferences of Member State governments are reflected in the decisions of the Advocates General, who are judge-like members of the ECJ. The empirical analysis is motivated by a novel model of the interaction between the Advocate General and the judicial panel. Based on this model, the paper develops a formal test to answer whether there is a relationship between the policy preferences of EU Member State governments with regard to European integration and the decision behavior of Advocates General appointed by these governments. It then tests this hypothesis using a newly assembled dataset combining information on agreements and disagreements between the opinions issued by the Advocates General and the ensuing judgments of the ECJ in preliminary ruling proceedings with information on political preferences of Member State governments obtained from party manifesto data. The results of this test suggest that the votes of Advocates General reflect the political preferences of the appointing governments vis-à-vis European integration.

Medical malpractices (med-mals) are among the most long-lasting litigations in the United States with an average duration of more than 4 years. Using the Florida database of med-mals, this study examines each physician in multiple sequential cases and documents a significantly negative correlation between the length of litigation and defendants’ numbers of past med-mals: a case closes nearly 1 year sooner if its defendant has previously experienced another claim. To explain this stylized fact, a dynamic model with the feature of “firmness of beliefs” is developed. The model assumes that the more prior litigations, the more realistic perception of the tort system and therefore a faster closure of the final dispute. I call this mechanism “learning-by-doing.” Alternative hypotheses include the following: (1) plaintiffs’ endogenous choice of filing against physicians with worse histories and (2) physicians’ reputation (career) concerns. I find no evidence in support of the first one, but the reputation concern cannot be rejected. The learning-by-doing mechanism is consistent in many robustness tests, including controlling for the reputation concerns. An earlier version of this paper was circulated under the title: Learning How to Handle Malpractice Litigation from Experience: Evidence from Florida

We consider the impact of a low priority initiative adopted in specific jurisdictions within Los Angeles (LA) County on police behavior. Low priority initiatives instruct police to make the enforcement of low level marijuana possession offenses their “lowest priority.” Using detailed data from the LA County Sheriff’s Department, a difference-in-differences strategy suggests that the mandate resulted in fewer arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession in adopting areas relative to non-adopting. However, the lower relative reduction in marijuana arrests appears to be driven by an increase in misdemeanor marijuana arrests in nearby areas not affected by the mandate rather than a reduction in adopting areas. We interpret this result as suggestive evidence of policy spillovers from the low priority initiative.

Judicial efficiency matters for economic development. Nevertheless, the determinants of judicial productivity growth are not entirely understood. Using data of Brazil's state courts for the period of 2009 to 2014, this paper analyzes judicial productivity change and its possible determinants over time in a two stage approach. First, data envelopment analysis is used to calculate Malmquist productivity measures which are decomposed in: technical change (frontier-shift effect) and efficiency change (composed of pure efficiency change and scale efficiency change). In the second stage, fixed effect models are estimated to evaluate the associated factors with judicial productivity growth. The first stage results show a slight improvement in judicial productivity trend, which is defined mainly by efficiency change, since technical change deteriorated in the period. The second stage findings suggest the nonexistence of a trade-off between judicial quality and efficiency improvement. Moreover, judges’ remuneration, legal complexity and technological use are correlated with judicial productivity, however not always in the expected direction.

Why would an industry that was not colluding yesterday start colluding today? This article distills insights about cartel formation from 41 cases prosecuted by the European Commission between 2001 and 2010. The case studies examine the events occurring prior to the cartels’ set-up. Cartel formation is affected by changes in prices, demand and customer conduct, capacity utilization, increased imports and entry by competitors, as well as events in the legal and regulatory environment of the firms. Yet, none of these factors serves as a good marker of cartel formation when being regarded in isolation. It rather needs to be analyzed how changes in these factors interact and whether they raise the intensity of competition. In this context, factors that are commonly deemed to destabilize cartels, like entry of new competitors or buyer power, are found to actually foster cartel formation.