Stephen J. Spurr

Sex Discrimination in the Legal Profession: A Study of Promotion.

Although the proportion of lawyers who are women has grown rapidly in recent years, this study presents evidence of discrimination against women in promotion to partnership in major U.S. law firms in 1969–73 and 1980. Using regression analysis and maximum likelihood estimates of a probabilistic model of production of legal services, the author finds that women were about one-half as likely as men to achieve partnership in those years, even though they did not significantly differ from men in academic distinction (selection for the law review or the Order of the Coif), the rank of their law schools, or productivity.

Turnover and Promotion of Lawyers: An Inquiry into Gender Differences.

This paper analyzes the turnover and promotion of male and female lawyers, using data on two cohorts of lawyers; one which entered law firms between 1969 and 1973, and the other entering between 1980 and 1983. This study considers whether law firm promotion decisions have differed for women, and if so, whether these differences have declined over time. A competing risks duration model is employed to capture the link between the lawyers decision to stay or leave and the firms decision to grant or deny promotion. We find that over the entire sample period, women are considerably less likely to be promoted and slightly more likely to leave the firm without being promoted. However, we also find that the parametric differential between men and women in partnership hazards has been reduced substantially, and in the most general of our specifications, eliminated across the two cohorts. In contrast, the gap between male and female job turnover rates does not appear to change over time. We find that the gap between males and females in the cumulative partnership rate at seven years of experience falls from 32 to 14 percent. The turnover gap increases about 0.2 percent, with females slightly more likely to exit from the firm in the later period.

The Baseball Draft: A Study of the Ability to Find Talent

This article provides an analysis of the baseball draft. The objective is to determine whether the ability to recognize talent, that is, a player who will reach the major leagues, varies with the position of the player across different baseball clubs or with the level of schooling attoined by the player when he is drafted. The data set is a choice-based sample, and the author uses econometric techniques specifically developed for such samples. It is found that in the long term, there is no statistically significant difference between clubs in terms of their ability to find major league prospects. Also, the value of one attribute, namely college experience, was underestimated by the market for a substantial period of time. Eventually, however, the value of college experience was assimilated by the market.

The Effect of State Laws on the Supply of Advanced Practice Nurses

This paper considers how the decision to enter advanced practice nursing (e.g., the occupations of nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife, nurse anesthetist, and clinical nurse specialist) is affected by State laws on the scope of practice of APNs. We find that enrollments in APN programs are 30 percent higher in States where APNs have a high level of professional independence. Our work differs from previous studies by estimating a fixed effects model on cross-sectional and time series data, to avoid problems of endogeneity of State laws.

The Duration of Litigation

This paper analyzes the duration of litigation. The analysis of court congestion by Posner (1972) and Priest (1989) suggests that the effects of delay reduction programs may be only transitory, because initial improvements may be swamped by an offsetting increase in demand for litigation. However, we find some evidence that time to settlement was reduced in a Michigan court by a program that provided for early intervention in each case by a judge who imposed a time schedule on major events of the litigation. Using two new data sets on personal injury claims, we find that the time to settlement increases with the amount at stake but is sharply reduced when the case is referred to a specialist in personal injury litigation. Estimates of a duration model indicate that the likelihood of settlement is increased by the completion of discovery and especially by the settlement conference. We find that the hazard of settlement increases as the case gets closer to trial. This finding is in accord with the “deadline effect” derived from certain bargaining models.

The Proposed Market for Human Organs

During the last decade there have been enormous advances in the transplantation of vital human organs--in particular, the kidney, lung, heart, liver, pancreas, and small intestine. Unfortunately, efforts to provide the benefits of these operations to patients have been severely hindered by limitations in the supply of organs--limitations that are a consequence of regulation prohibiting the use of market incentives to increase the supply. Markets for organs could take various forms: sales by living donors; sales of future interests in organs, to be removed on the death of the donor; and sales of organs of a recently deceased person by the family of the deceased. Two additional issues relate to the design of a market: the geographic scope of the market and rules of liability for the sale of diseased or defective organs.

The role of nonbinding alternative dispute resolution in litigation

This paper analyzes pretrial mediation, in which a panel estimates the value of the plaintiffs claim. Each party must decide whether to accept or reject the resulting award. If either party rejects, the case proceeds on toward trial; however, most cases are ultimately settled. We develop and then test a model in which each party has private information about the claim, but the mediation panel does not. The model predicts (1) the probability that each party accepts or rejects the mediation award, and (2) if the award is rejected and the case is later settled, how the settlement payment compares to the mediation award. Keyword: Mediation, Alternative dispute resolution, Litigation, Arbitration, Risk aversion

Physicians and the risk of medical malpractice: The role of prior litigation in predicting the future

Abstract This article examines the role of a physician’s prior experience in medical malpractice litigation in the resolution of current malpractice claims. We first use probability theory to show that if physicians are heterogeneous in the quality of care they practice, then a record of malpractice liability makes it more likely that the physician provides care of relatively low quality, and that if a malpractice claim is filed, it is more likely that the physician was in fact negligent in this case, and that the claim will be paid. We then show that this last result, which is testable, holds up when we analyze the resolution of medical malpractice claims filed in Michigan over the period 1982 to 1989. We find that malpractice liability, whether from an out-of-court settlement or through verdict of a court or arbitration panel, is significantly more likely when the defendant has a poor prior litigation record. The defendant’s litigation record is also positively and significantly related to the amount of a settlement payment, but not to an award made through trial or arbitration.

The future of capital punishment: determinants of the time from death sentence to execution

This paper analyzes data on all inmates under a death sentence in the U.S. since 1972, to determine the effect of various factors on the time from sentence to execution, and the probability of execution. We find that over time the probability of execution is increasing, and the time to execution is declining. The probability of execution is greater for males and inmates with a high level of education, and may also be greater for those who were previously convicted of murder. There is no evidence of any effect of race. The fact that there are sharp differences between States within the same Federal Circuit with respect to both the likelihood of execution and waiting time, suggests that the lower federal courts play a relatively minor role in death penalty litigation.

The effect of medical malpractice liability on rate of referrals received by specialist physicians

Using nationally representative data from the United States, this paper analyzed the effect of a state’s medical malpractice environment on referral visits received by specialist physicians. The analytic sample included 12,839 ambulatory visits to specialist care doctors in office-based settings in the United States during 2003–2007. Whether the patient was referred for the visit was examined for its association with the state’s malpractice environment, assessed by the frequency and severity of paid medical malpractice claims, medical malpractice insurance premiums and an indicator for whether the state had a cap on non-economic damages. After accounting for potential confounders such as economic or professional incentives within practices, the analysis showed that statutory caps on non-economic damages of