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Full-Text Articles in Law
Standards Of Proof In Civil Litigation: An Experiment From Patent Law, David L. Schwartz, Christopher B. Seaman
Standards Of Proof In Civil Litigation: An Experiment From Patent Law, David L. Schwartz, Christopher B. Seaman
Christopher B. Seaman
Standards of proof are widely assumed to matter in litigation. They operate to allocate the risk of error between litigants, as well as to indicate the relative importance attached to the ultimate decision. But despite their perceived importance, there have been relatively few empirical studies testing jurors’ comprehension and application of standards of proof, particularly in civil litigation. Patent law recently presented an opportunity to assess the potential impact of varying the standard of proof in civil cases. In Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Limited Partnership, the Supreme Court held that a patent’s presumption of validity can only be overcome by …
The Front Line Of Social Capital Creation – A Natural Experiment In Symbolic Interaction, Roger Patulny, Peter Siminski, Silvia Mendolia
The Front Line Of Social Capital Creation – A Natural Experiment In Symbolic Interaction, Roger Patulny, Peter Siminski, Silvia Mendolia
Silvia Mendolia
This paper offers theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding the micro-sociological processes behind the creation of social capital. Theoretically, we argue that the emotional and shared experience of participating in symbolic interaction rituals may affect social capital in four different ways, via: (i) a 'citizenship' effect, connecting participants symbolically to the broader, civic society; (ii) a 'supportive' effect, bonding participants with each other; (iii) an exclusive 'tribal' effect, which crowds-out connections with other groups and the wider society; and (iv) an 'atomising' effect, whereby intense experiences create mental health problems that damage social capital. We illustrate this with a case …
Experimental Evidence Of Tax Salience And The Labor-Leisure Decision: Anchoring, Tax Aversion, Or Complexity?, Andrew Hayashi, Brent K, Nakamura, David Gamage
Experimental Evidence Of Tax Salience And The Labor-Leisure Decision: Anchoring, Tax Aversion, Or Complexity?, Andrew Hayashi, Brent K, Nakamura, David Gamage
Andrew Hayashi
Recent research in marketing and public economics suggests that consumers underestimate the effects of taxes and surcharges on total purchase prices when taxes and surcharges are made less salient. The leading explanation is that consumers anchor on base prices and underadjust for surcharges. We perform experiments that: (1) extend the tax salience and price partitioning literatures to the labor supply context; (2) test the anchoring hypothesis by examining the effects of positive and negative wage surcharges on willingness to work; and (3) test whether responses to price partitioning result from imperfect calculation of all-inclusive prices or from deeper preferences. We …
Avatar Experimentation: Human Subjects Research In Virtual Worlds, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Avatar Experimentation: Human Subjects Research In Virtual Worlds, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Researchers love virtual worlds. They are drawn to virtual worlds because of the opportunity to study real populations and real behavior in shared simulated environments. The growing number of virtual worlds and population growth within such worlds has led to a sizeable increase in the number of human subjects experiments taking place in such worlds. Virtual world users care deeply about their avatars, their virtual property, their privacy, their relationships, their community, and their accounts. People within virtual worlds act much as they would in the physical world, because the experience of the virtual world is "real" to them. The …
When Punishment Fails: Research On Sanctions, Intentions And Non-Cooperation, Vernon L. Smith, Daniel Houser, Erte Xiao, Kevin A. Mccabe
When Punishment Fails: Research On Sanctions, Intentions And Non-Cooperation, Vernon L. Smith, Daniel Houser, Erte Xiao, Kevin A. Mccabe
Vernon L. Smith
People can become less cooperative when threatened with sanctions, and previous research has pointed to both intentions and incentives as sources of this effect. This paper reports data from a novel experiment aimed at determining the relative importance of intentions and incentives in producing non-cooperative behavior in a personal exchange environment. Subjects play a one-shot investment game in pairs. Investors send an amount to trustees and request a return on this investment and, in some treatments, are given the option to threaten sanctions to enforce this return request. The decisions of trustees who face credible threats intentionally imposed (or not) …