Artikel in referierten Fachzeitschriften
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research
Do Judges Hate Speculators?
(2019). Do Judges Hate Speculators? European Journal of Law and Economics, 47 (2), 147-169.
Historically, people have often expressed negative feelings toward speculators, a
sentiment that might have even been reinforced since the latest financial crisis, dur-
ing which taxpayer money was warranted or spent to bail out reckless investors. In
this paper, we conjecture that judges may also have anti-speculator sentiment, which
might affect their professional decision making. We asked 123 professional law-
yers and 247 law students in Germany this question, and they clearly predicted that
judges would have an anti-speculator bias. However, in an actual behavioral study,
185 judges did not exhibit such bias. In another sample of 170 professional lawyers,
we found weak support for an anti-speculator bias. This evidence suggests that an
independent audience may actually perceive unbiased judgments as biased. While
the literature usually suggests that a communication problem exists between lawyers
and non-lawyers (i.e. between judges and the general public), we find that this prob-
lem can also exist within the legal community.
Also published in: The Romanian Judges' Forum Review, 1/2019, 26 - 45