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AbstractIf jurors care about reaching the correct verdict, but also experience costs to paying attention during the trial, even a small effort cost generates interesting interactions between pretrial beliefs and verdict accuracy. I demonstrate the existence of a strong free riding effect; jurors respond to a more informative prior by reducing their probabilities of paying attention, to the extent that over a non-empty range, a more informative prior will be associated with poorer verdicts. Pretrial beliefs can depend on several factors: I consider two – the extent of discovery during the pre-plea bargaining process, and the efficiency of the police. My results imply that more liberal discovery rules, which result in a less noisy plea bargaining process, will actually be complemented by greater juror effort over a range, resulting in more accurate verdicts. In contrast, greater police efficiency will, over a range, elicit a sufficient drop in juror effort such that verdicts are less accurate. Thus, improving discovery has added benefits over a range, while the benefits of exogenous improvements in policing may be dampened. I briefly extend the model to cases where attentive jurors receive an imperfect public signal instead of a perfect one, and to cases where jurors' utilities from convicting a guilty defendant differ from their utilities from acquitting an innocent one.

ABSTRACTMany real‐life contexts involve allocating an indivisible prize between two claimants. One (or both) claimants may derive 'malice utility' from depriving the other claimant. I study an arbitrator who does not know if malice is involved in a particular dispute, but wishes the prize to be allocated to the party with the higher intrinsic valuation for it and discuss two simple mechanisms that achieve his purpose regardless of whether malice is actually present. I examine several extensions.

Using concepts from game theory, political economy, law and economics and the economics of asymmetric information, we describe the economics of one of the most famous trials in history—that of the Athenian philosopher Socrates. We discuss the question of whether Socrates' actions during his trial were rational, using two different models. Our analysis sheds some light on institutional efficiency in trials that followed the classical Athenian pattern.

We examine how increased competition among motivated microfinance institutions (MFIs) impacts the poorest borrowers' access to microfinance. We find that competition depends on inequality, technology, and the possibility of double‐dipping (borrowing from several sources). Without competition, even a motivated MFI may lend to the not‐so‐poor in preference to poor borrowers. If double‐dipping is feasible, competition may encourage lending to the poor. The presence of double‐dipping is critical for MFI competition to have a positive effect. When double‐dipping is feasible, MFI coordination may worsen borrower targeting whenever inequality is intermediate. We discuss policy implications dealing with double‐dipping, MFI coordination, and competition.