Empirical Evidence of Anchoring Effect in Litigations

 CV：Upload/File/2018/9/20180926050638440.pdf

Abstract: Given its wide acceptance, it is surprising that the empirical, rather than experimental, evidence for anchoring effect is rare and inconclusive. We offer the first large-scale court evidence for anchoring in judicial decision-making. Using Taiwan’s court cases on trespassing, matched with transaction data of lands and another dataset on judge experience, we provide evidence that the plaintiff’s claim strongly anchors the court’s judgment: Both the plaintiff’s claim and defendant’s counter-claim significantly influence the decisions of the less-experienced judges, but not the more-experienced judges. Therefore, we not only provide evidence for anchoring in litigation, but also suggest experience as a crucial debiaser.