Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog

I forget whose idea this is, but it is a good one. Suppose each of 9 jurors gets a signal of guilty or innocence. They must be unanimous to convict. I get a signal of INNOCENT. We will vote independently, without discussion. What should I do?

I should not vote INNOCENT in equilibrium. Rather, I will mix. That is because if I pick INNOCENT, maybe everybody else has GUILTY, and I will wreck everything and there will be acquittal. Thus, in equilibrium there will be some people with INNOCENT signals who will vote GUILTY anyway.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 8:24 am and is filed under Economics, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.