Jurors, Judges, and the Mistreatment of Risk by the Courts
W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt University - Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Vanderbilt University - Department of Economics; Vanderbilt University - Owen Graduate School of Management; Vanderbilt University - Strategy and Business Economics
August 2000
Harvard Law and Economics Discussion Paper No. 291
Abstract:
A sample of almost 500 jury-eligible citizens considered a series of experimental situation involving accidents. The juror sample did not properly apply negligence rules, as their errors were particularly great for low probability-large loss cases. They also penalized corporations for undertaking corporate risk analyses that seek to trade off cost versus risk reduction benefits. Jurors' damages assessments were also more prone to error than were responses by a sample of state judges. Judges were less prone to erroneous risk beliefs and less subject to the zero risk mentality.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 59
JEL Classification: D80, J17
working papers series
Suggested Citation
Viscusi, W. Kip, Jurors, Judges, and the Mistreatment of Risk by the Courts (August 2000). Harvard Law and Economics Discussion Paper No. 291. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=239970 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.239970
