Harold Winter

On criminals' risk attitudes

Abstract If criminals are expected utility maximizers and more sensitive to changes in the certainty than the severity of punishment, they must be risk preferrers. We show that risk aversion is not ruled out if the expected utility hypothesis is weakened.

Bilateral Most-Favored-Customer Pricing and Collusion

In a two-period differentiated products duopoly model, most-favored-customer (MFC) pricing policies allow firms to commit to prices above the Bertrand prices. It is shown here, however, that unless a restrictive and unappealing assumption is made about demand, there is no equilibrium in which both firms adopt MFC policies. The restrictive assumption is that at least one firms demand is more responsive to changes in its opponents price than to changes in its own price; otherwise, firms have an incentive to deviate from a greater-than-Bertrand price in the first period.

Enhancing bargaining power with most-favored-customer pricing

Abstract A monopolist faces a finite sequence of identical buyers and negotiates with each buyer individually. Most-favored-customer pricing allows the firm to exploit its position as the repeat player in the game and extract more of each buyers surplus.

Bias and the economics of jury selection

Abstract In considering the expected social loss of the jury process, we investigate the role of peremptory challenges based on observable juror characteristics such as race or gender. The effectiveness of peremptory challenges depends on the relative social costs of incorrect verdicts and hung juries, and on jury pool population demographics. Some of our results are: (a) for a defendant clearly in the majority, awarding peremptory challenges is unlikely to be optimal because of increased wrongful acquittal costs; (b) for a defendant clearly in the minority, asymmetric challenges in favor of the defense may be optimal but only if wrongful conviction costs are “very large” compared to hung jury costs; (c) when optimal, more symmetric challenges should be awarded the less biased the population, but more asymmetric challenges should be awarded the more biased the population; (d) to reduce wrongful acquittal costs, it may be optimal to award asymmetric peremptory challenges in favor of the prosecution; and (e) our results offer no support for the complete elimination of peremptory challenges.

A verification of the expected utility calibration theorem

Abstract We investigate whether a single utility function can fit data from both small- and large-scale risks. Utility functions consistent with the wage–fatality risk tradeoff are less risk averse than those consistent with portfolio choice data, as predicted by the expected utility calibration theorem.

Political Influence Over Supreme Court Criminal Procedure Cases

Abstract In sharp contrast with much recent work in the area of positive political economy, much of the analysis of U.S. Supreme Court decision making has excluded political changes as possible factors influencing Court rulings. In this essay, we analyze Supreme Court voting on criminal procedure cases for the years 1953–1993 and find evidence of significant Presidential and Congressional impact on Court behavior. We argue that this provides evidence against the conventional wisdom that the Court is an autonomous decision-making body.

Infinitely-repeated games with endogenous discounting

Abstract The standard repeated game setting is changed by allowing one player to decide the time interval between repetitions. The resulting folk theorem states that any individually rational stage-game strategy combination can be repeated in equilibrium, with no threshold discount factor requirement.

A Positive Political Model of Supreme Court Economic Decisions

We develop a positive political model of the U.S. Supreme Court. Looking at the Courts economic cases for the period 1953–1993, we find a significant larger fraction of conservative decisions under Republican presidents and more conservative leadership of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Conservative decisions are also found to be positively correlated with the fraction of the Court appointed by Republican presidents and the rate of price inflation. We argue that our findings cast serious doubt on the common view of the Supreme Court as a completely independent, apolitical institution.

Readership competition and the ‘monopoly’ press

Most American newspapers are published in cities in which no other daily newspaper is published. While these newspapers are considered city monopolists, this study examines the effect of readership competition across cities. By using a sample of 386 newspaper firms that publish in cities in which no other daily newspaper is published, this paper demonstrates that these ‘monopoly’ newspapers face significant readership competition from newspapers published in other cities.