Abstract
In this article, we study the decision-making of judges in an experimental setting resembling real world judicial decision-making in order to measure the impact of advisory guidelines on judges’ decisions in divorce cases. We gave 312 French future judges 48 case vignettes, built from real data related to divorce cases involving children. We compared two different subject pools: judges who were asked to set child support awards with an advisory guideline and judges who were asked to set child support awards without any guidelines. We find that guidelines help to reduce the disparity between judges: the variance in similar cases is lower when the subjects have the opportunity to use guidelines. On the other hand, this effect is not systematic since we observe an increase in heterogeneity in some particular cases. We interpret this result by considering that the guidelines may generate a conflict of norms: the judge may be torn between the social norm represented by the guidelines and based on the child’s interest and the legal norm that limits her decisions which need to stay within the parties’ proposals. An increase of heterogeneity would result from different trade-offs between judges.
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Notes
It should be noted that this federal reform was a continuation of what some states were already doing, some of which had already implemented their own criminal guidelines in the mid-1970s.
“The Family Support Act of 1988 requires states to establish one set of guidelines by law, judicial or administrative action that are to be applied in any judicial or administrative proceeding, and provide a rebuttable presumption for applying the guidelines based on state-determined criteria that consider the best interest of the child” (Venohr and Griffith, 2005: 416).
The objective of horizontal fairness may lead to the vertical fairness of decisions being sacrificed in guidelines by undermining the proportionality of judgment. For Waldfogel (1998), who focuses on sentences, guidelines may lead to excessive uniformity of decisions by eliminating good, as well as bad, sentencing variations linked to the specificities of the cases. In contrast, Miceli (2008) argues that sentencing guidelines may guarantee vertical equity provided they are well framed.
Judges, like other economic agents, may be victims of cognitive biases (Guthrie et al., 2001; Kahan, 2015; Liu, 2018; Spamann and Klöhn, 2016; Wistrich et al., 2015). There is no reason to think that all judges suffer from the same types of biases and, for those who are victims of the same bias, that they do so with the same intensity.
Kahneman et al. (2021) call noise the unwanted variability in professional judgement in similar situations. Bias, in contrast, is an individual’s tendency to use the same patterns of decision-making in similar situations. Noise results in discrepancies in the decisions of a decision-maker having similar cases, as well as in the decisions of different decision-makers. This phenomenon can be observed in several professional contexts, including the legal context, and causes great economic loss and injustice according to Kahneman et al.
The National School for the Judiciary (ENM) is the only institution in France that trains future judges. The ENM recruits about 500 student judges per year, half of whom are professionals in retraining (former lawyers, civil servants, legal experts, etc.) and the other half are young law graduates.
In 2010 the French Ministry of Justice produced guidelines for the determination of child support awards. The guidelines are advisory: judges are free not to set the amount prescribed by the guidelines. The guidelines are based on the following rationales: a percentage is applied to the non-custodial parent’s income, and this percentage varies according to the parent–child visitation but is independent of the debtor parent's income. This percentage refers to the relative cost of the child as calculated by INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economics). With regard to the different guidelines models used in the United States, the French guidelines correspond to a percentage-of-obligor income model once the non-residential parent’s basic needs are met. (cf. https://www.justice.fr/simulateurs/pensions-alimentaire/bareme).
As Schultz and Shaw (2013) explain, in civil law countries judges “act as anonymous interpreters of the law according to specified interpretation rules and pass judgements in the name of the state or the people” (p. 6); such a system leaves no room for discussion of, for example, the influence of judges’ characteristics on judgments. In contrast, in common law countries, judges “have greater discretion in reaching their decision by ‘distinguishing’ the case in hand from precedents. They ‘make the law’. The judgement is therefore more closely connected to their personality” (p. 6).
In criminal areas, the Federal sentencing guidelines consist in proposing sentencing ranges by category of offense, according to two characteristics of the case: past criminal history of the offender and severity of the current offense. Judges are allowed to depart from this range (downward or upward) only under certain circumstances and provided that they give relevant reasons, which may relate to the characteristics of the case or legal issues (Schanzenbach & Tiller, 2007). In this case, the expected reduction of disparity is due to the framing of the judges’ decision by the implementation of a floor and a ceiling sentence.
According to the taxonomy proposed by Harrison and List (2004), a framed field experiment is an experiment with a nonstandard subject pool with a field context, in either the environment, the commodity, the task or the information set that the subjects can use. In our case, the experiment is not run with students but with near-field subjects since they are all future judges, with an interest in the particular task they have to deal with (to set child support), and with a previous professional practice in the field of divorce law for some of them.
The database, compiled by the Ministry of Justice, contains detailed information on divorce decisions involving one or more children and parental separations with minor child(ren). These judicial decisions were made in June 2012 in the French first instance courts (Tribunal de Grande Instance, TGI). The database consists of 4,577 applications for child support. It is made representative at the national level through a weighting scheme based on the national statistics of the Ministry of Justice.
Whether or not the children are over the age of adulthood can affect the amount of support. In order to avoid this dimension being a source of heterogeneity, we specified the ages of the children using median ages according to the number of siblings (5 years for one child, 6 and 10 years for two siblings).
In France, the minimum income (Revenu de Solidarité Active) is about €500/month for a single person.
These proposals are crucial to judicial decision-making since, except for special situations which require justification, in French law, the judge cannot rule on what has not been requested by the parties (extra petita) and in particular cannot set an amount above the request of the creditor (ultra petita). This point will be addressed in Sect. 4.
Cases where the parents agree on the child support award are not considered in the experiment.
An example of 4 of these 48 case vignettes is given in appendix 2.
The selfishness scale proposed values between 0 and 10, with 10 corresponding to a purely selfish individual. The risk scale proposed values between 0 and 10, with 10 corresponding to a risk lover. The inequality aversion scale proposed values between 0 and 10, with 10 corresponding to an individual who is very much in favor of reducing inequalities. In the subsequent analyses, we used dummy variables which, for each scale, opposed two sub-groups of students: altruistic people (selfishness scale less than 5) versus selfish people; risk lovers (risk scale greater than 4) versus those who are risk averse; equality lovers (equality scale greater than 7) versus those who prefer inequality.
The mean value of the 48 intra-vignette variances for the “without guidelines” sub-sample (1,054) does not differ significantly (t-test, 10% threshold) from its value for the “with guidelines” sub-sample (839).
First, we calculated the 96 variances (one per vignette for the “without guidelines” sub-sample, and same for the other sub-sample). Then, drawing on the principles governing influence statistics (Belsey, Küh and Welsh, 1980), we calculated the same variances but as if a student was not taken into account in turn (resulting in 14,880 [= 150*48 + 160*48] variances). Then we calculated for each student his/her relative contributions to the variance of each vignette, along the following formula: contribution (student i, vignette #v) = [variance (vignette #v) calculated on all students belonging to one of the 2 sub-samples – variance (vignette #v) calculated on all students minus student i belonging to the same sub-sample] / variance (vignette #v) calculated on all students belonging to one of the 2 sub-samples. The next step consists in averaging the contributions of each student i over the 48 vignettes. In fact, all the average student-specific contributions appear to be non-significantly different from others, with only one exception (indicating a stronger influence of this student on the vignettes’ variance, on average over the 48 vignettes). Then, to find out whether student’s characteristics do influence their contribution to the variance, we gave each student a rank according to his/her contribution to the variance and we regressed that dependent variable against the student’s characteristics. None of the coefficients was found significant, except for liking risk (only weakly significant: 5%). As a consequence, we may conclude that the contribution of each student to the heterogeneity of decisions does not seem to be related to the individual (observed) characteristics of the students.
Variance being a metric-dependent indicator of heterogeneity, it is expected that the variance of high child support decisions will be mechanically higher than the variance of lower child support decisions. A case characteristic (i.e., the father’s income) can therefore be related to the amount of support, and therefore to the variance of decisions in that case and ultimately to the difference in “with versus without guidelines” variances. If a significant regression coefficient is found for a case characteristic explaining the difference in variance, we do not know whether it is due to a true impact of this characteristic on this difference or to the fact that the variances with and without guidelines increase when the amount of child support is greater due to this characteristic. To avoid this drawback, one can use the coefficient of variation which measures relative heterogeneity rather than variance. We therefore duplicated all the estimates presented in the Table 2 using this other indicator of dispersion (Appendix 4). The results are close to those obtained with variance, but the impact of significant factors on variance is generally much more significant on the coefficient of variation.
According to our estimations based on the data we used to build our case-vignettes, this situation is probably not rare: 38% of the requests would be below the amount suggested by the guidelines and 23% of the offers would be above the amount suggested by the guidelines. The sample consists of 4,577 applications for child support, but after excluding some missing data and especially excluding cases where the monthly income of the debtor parent is outside the range specified by the guidelines ([700€; 5000€]), our estimate is based on only 2,722 observations. In this estimation, the guidelines’ values are calculated using the three parameters that constitute to the guidelines of the Ministry of Justice: the monthly income of the debtor, number of dependent children and type of accommodation of the child. The amounts of income, supply and demand are those notified in the court decision by the judge; we cannot exclude that there is under-reporting, but it is the information known by the judge and from which he makes his decision.
The experimental design consists of 14 cases where the amount suggested by the guidelines is greater than the mother’s request, 7 cases where the amount suggested by the guidelines is less than the father’s offer, and 27 cases where the value suggested by the guidelines is between the two parental proposals.
Depending on the other characteristics of the cases, the values suggested by the guidelines are €164, €192, €211 or €257.
Depending on the other characteristics of the cases, the values suggested by the guidelines are €72, €84, €97 or €113.
An artefactual field experiment could have been conducted by submitting vignettes to real judges in the laboratory. However, because there is relatively little data available to finely characterize the population of active French judges, this type of methodology would also have limitations in terms of external validity due to a risk of selection bias that is difficult to control for (cf. Bourreau-Dubois et al., 2006).
According to our estimations based on the data base we used to construct our vignettes, the real judges make decisions outside the ranges of the parents’ proposals in 3.7% of the cases where the parents disagree on the amount of child support.
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This work has benefited from the financial support of the Mission Droit et Justice (2016-2018).
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Appendices
Appendix 1: The 48 vignettes given to the subjects
Income | Proposals | 1 child, 5 years old | 2 children, 6 and 10 years old | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Main accommodation with the mother | Almost exclusive accommodation with the mother | Main accommodation with the mother | Almost exclusive accommodation with the mother | ||
Father: 100 Mother: 300 | 1 | 5 | 25 | 29 | |
Father: 1,900€ | Father: 0 Mother: 150 | 2 | 6 | 26 | 30 |
Mother: 1,000€ | Father: unknown Mother: 150 | 3 | 7 | 27 | 31 |
Father: 140 Mother: 200 | 4 | 8 | 28 | 32 | |
Father: 100 Mother: 300 | 9 | 13 | 33 | 37 | |
Father: 1,100€ | Father: 0 Mother: 150 | 10 | 14 | 34 | 38 |
Mother: 2,500€ | Father: unknown Mother: 150 | 11 | 15 | 35 | 39 |
Father: 140 Mother: 200 | 12 | 16 | 36 | 40 | |
Father: 100 Mother: 300 | 17 | 21 | 41 | 45 | |
Father: 1,600€ | Father: 0 Mother: 150 | 18 | 22 | 42 | 46 |
Mother: 1,500€ | Father: unknown Mother: 150 | 19 | 23 | 43 | 47 |
Father: 140 Mother: 200 | 20 | 24 | 44 | 48 | |
Appendix 2: An example of 4 case vignettes
Appendix 3: The indicative guidelines for child support awards (monthly amounts per child) from the French Ministry of Justice
Monthly income of the debtor parent | One child | Two children | Three children | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scope of visit and accommodation rights | ||||||
Reduced | Standard | Reduced | Standard | Reduced | Standard | |
700€ | 41 | 30 | 35 | 26 | 30 | 23 |
800€ | 59 | 44 | 50 | 37 | 43 | 33 |
900€ | 77 | 57 | 66 | 49 | 57 | 43 |
1 000€ | 95 | 71 | 81 | 60 | 70 | 53 |
1 100€ | 113 | 84 | 97 | 72 | 83 | 63 |
1 200€ | 131 | 98 | 112 | 83 | 96 | 73 |
1 300€ | 149 | 111 | 128 | 95 | 110 | 83 |
1 400€ | 167 | 125 | 143 | 106 | 123 | 93 |
1 500€ | 185 | 138 | 159 | 118 | 136 | 103 |
1 600€ | 203 | 152 | 174 | 129 | 150 | 113 |
1 700€ | 221 | 165 | 190 | 141 | 163 | 123 |
1 800€ | 239 | 179 | 205 | 152 | 176 | 133 |
1 900€ | 257 | 192 | 221 | 164 | 190 | 143 |
2 000€ | 275 | 206 | 236 | 175 | 203 | 153 |
2 100€ | 293 | 219 | 252 | 187 | 216 | 163 |
2 200€ | 311 | 233 | 267 | 198 | 229 | 173 |
2 300€ | 329 | 246 | 283 | 210 | 243 | 183 |
2 400€ | 347 | 260 | 298 | 221 | 256 | 193 |
2 500€ | 365 | 273 | 314 | 233 | 269 | 203 |
2 600€ | 383 | 287 | 329 | 244 | 283 | 213 |
2 700€ | 401 | 300 | 345 | 256 | 296 | 223 |
2 800€ | 419 | 314 | 360 | 267 | 309 | 233 |
2 900€ | 437 | 327 | 376 | 279 | 323 | 243 |
3 000€ | 455 | 341 | 391 | 290 | 336 | 253 |
3 100€ | 473 | 354 | 407 | 302 | 349 | 263 |
3 200€ | 491 | 368 | 422 | 313 | 362 | 273 |
3 300€ | 509 | 381 | 438 | 325 | 376 | 283 |
3 400€ | 527 | 395 | 453 | 336 | 389 | 293 |
3 500€ | 545 | 408 | 469 | 348 | 402 | 303 |
3 600€ | 563 | 422 | 484 | 359 | 416 | 313 |
3 700€ | 581 | 435 | 500 | 371 | 429 | 323 |
3 800€ | 599 | 449 | 515 | 382 | 442 | 333 |
3 900€ | 617 | 462 | 531 | 394 | 456 | 343 |
4 000€ | 635 | 476 | 546 | 405 | 469 | 353 |
4 100€ | 653 | 489 | 562 | 417 | 482 | 363 |
4 200€ | 671 | 503 | 577 | 428 | 495 | 373 |
4 300€ | 689 | 516 | 593 | 440 | 509 | 383 |
4 400€ | 707 | 530 | 608 | 451 | 522 | 393 |
4 500€ | 725 | 543 | 624 | 463 | 535 | 403 |
4 600€ | 743 | 557 | 639 | 474 | 549 | 413 |
4 700€ | 761 | 570 | 655 | 486 | 562 | 423 |
4 800€ | 779 | 584 | 670 | 497 | 575 | 433 |
4 900€ | 797 | 597 | 686 | 509 | 589 | 443 |
Appendix 4: Estimations of the coefficient of variation of child support decisions
Coefficient of variation | Difference “with – without guideline” of coefficient of variation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
(1) | (2) | (3) | |
Constant | 0.141*** | − 0.040* | − 0.053*** |
With Guideline (treatment) Without Guideline (control) | − 0.040 Ref | / / | / / |
Almost exclusive accommodation with mother Main accommodation with the mother | 0.004 Ref | 0.030 Ref | 0.030* Ref |
Siblings of two children One child | − 0.005 Ref | − 0.008 Ref | − 0.008 Ref |
Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | 0.064*** 0.076*** 0.061*** Ref | − 0.012 − 0.024 − 0.033* Ref | / / / / |
Father’s incomes = 1,100 – mother’s incomes = 2,500 Father’s incomes = 1,900 – mother’s incomes = 1,000 Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | 0.102*** 0.006 Ref | − 0.041 0.061*** Ref | / / / |
Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | |||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | / | − 0.026 |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | / | − 0.003 |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | / | 0.011 |
Father’s incomes = 1,900 – mother’s incomes = 1,000 | |||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | / | − 0.010 |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | / | 0.085*** |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | / | 0.097*** |
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | / | 0.051** |
Father’s incomes = 1,100 – mother’s incomes = 2,500 | |||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | / | − 0.006 |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | / | − 0.097** |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | / | − 0.087*** |
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | / | 0.007 |
Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | |||
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | / | Ref |
N R2 | 96 62.6% | 48 52.7% | 48 82.4% |
Appendix 5: Estimations of the difference “with – without guideline” of variance of child support decisions, according to the level of experience of the students on the divorce
Full sample | Had not previously handled a divorce case | Had previously handled a divorce case | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | |
Constant | − 327 | − 371*** | − 575** | − 587*** | − 89 | − 160 |
Almost exclusive accommodation with mother | 295 | 295* | 193 | 192 | 396* | 396* |
Main accommodation with the mother | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref |
Siblings of two children | − 132 | − 132 | − 25 | − 25 | − 232 | − 232 |
One child | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref |
Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | 110 | / | 188 | / | 24 | / |
Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | 81 | / | 89 | / | 60 | / |
Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | − 576* | / | − 713* | / | − 401 | / |
Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | Ref | / | Ref | / | Ref | / |
Father’s incomes = 1,100 – mother’s incomes = 2,500 | − 278 | / | − 270 | / | -283 | / |
Father’s incomes = 1,900 – mother’s incomes = 1,000 | 656** | / | 683** | / | 669** | / |
Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | Ref | / | Ref | / | Ref | / |
Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | ||||||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | − 512 | / | − 840 | / | − 172 |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | 118 | / | 163 | / | 68 |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | 185 | / | 291 | / | 75 |
Father’s incomes = 1,900 – mother’s incomes = 1,000 | ||||||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | − 559* | / | − 746*** | / | -241 |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | 1,202** | / | 1,205*** | / | 1,203* |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | 1,228** | / | 1,285*** | / | 1,179* |
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | 543** | / | 603** | / | 505* |
Father’s incomes = 1,100 – mother’s incomes = 2,500 | ||||||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | − 147 | / | − 103 | / | -189 |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | − 569* | / | − 650* | / | − 490 |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | − 573* | / | − 562** | / | -580 |
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | − 34 | / | − 153 | / | 96 |
Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | ||||||
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | Ref | / | Ref | / | Ref |
N | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 |
R2 | 50.0% | 77.4% | 50.6% | 81.1% | 46.8% | 67.3% |
Appendix 6: Estimations of the difference “with – without guideline” of variance of child support decisions, including or not including ultra petita decisions
Full sample | Without decisions > demand | Without decisions > demand or < Supply | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | |
Constant | − 327 | − 371*** | − 288* | − 353*** | − 163 | − 219** |
Almost exclusive accommodation with mother | 295 | 295* | − 8 | − 8 | 8 | 8 |
Main accommodation with the mother | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref |
Siblings of two children | − 132 | − 132 | − 54 | 54 | 50 | 50 |
One child | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref | Ref |
Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | 110 | / | − 119 | / | − 262* | / |
Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | 81 | / | − 152 | / | − 295** | / |
Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | − 576* | / | − 445*** | / | − 492** | / |
Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | Ref | / | Ref | / | Ref | / |
Father’s incomes = 1,100 – mother’s incomes = 2,500 | − 278 | / | − 157 | / | − 90 | / |
Father’s incomes = 1,900 – mother’s incomes = 1,000 | 656** | / | 82 | / | 51 | / |
Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | Ref | / | Ref | / | Ref | / |
Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | ||||||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | − 512 | / | − 472 | / | − 561* |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | 118 | / | − 33 | / | − 173 |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | 185 | / | 48 | / | − 91 |
Father’s incomes = 1,900 – mother’s incomes = 1,000 | ||||||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | − 559* | / | − 636*** | / | − 775*** |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | 1,202** | / | 184 | / | 45 |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | 1,228** | / | 209* | / | 70 |
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | 543** | / | 113 | / | 41 |
Father’s incomes = 1,100 – mother’s incomes = 2,500 | ||||||
and Father’s supply = 100 – mother’s request = 300 | / | − 147 | / | − 107 | / | − 12 |
and Father’s supply = 0 – mother’s request = 150 | / | − 569* | / | − 489** | / | − 628*** |
and Father’s unspecified supply – mother’s request = 150 | / | − 573* | / | − 495** | / | − 634*** |
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | − 34 | / | 7 | / | 89 |
Father’s incomes = 1,600 – mother’s incomes = 1,500 | ||||||
and Father’s supply = 140 – mother’s request = 200 | / | Ref | / | Ref | / | Ref |
N | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 |
R2 | 50.0% | 77.4% | 31.8% | 70.5% | 27.0% | 77.7% |
Appendix 7: Estimation of the probability of deciding ultra petita
Constant | 0.96 |
Subject characteristics | |
Age | − 0.14 |
Woman Male | 0.23 Ref |
In a couple, married or not Not in a couple | − 0.10 Ref |
With child(ren) No children | − 0.20 Ref |
Only law school No law school background or law school + other education | 0.22 Ref |
Worked before ENM Did not work before ENM | 1.12 Ref |
Previously handled a divorce case Never handled a divorce case | − 0.80 Ref |
Altruist Selfish | − 0.05 Ref |
Equality lover Equality-averse | 0.14 Ref |
Risk lover Risk-averse | 1.19 * Ref |
Lot 1 Lot 2 Lot 4 Lot 3 | − 2.07 * 0.61 1.97 * Ref |
Vignettes (definitions on appendix 1) | |
Case #2 | 1.31 ** |
Case #3 | 1.22 ** |
Case #6 | 2.44 *** |
Case #7 | 2.10 *** |
Case #8 | 0.57 |
Case #22 | 0.29 |
Case #23 | − 0.61 |
Case #26 | 1.31 ** |
Case #27 | 0.94 * |
Case #30 | 2.52 *** |
Case #31 | 2.35 *** |
Case #32 | 0.19 |
Case #46 | 0.67 |
Case #47 | Ref |
N | 2,100 |
We note that the probability of deviating from the procedural rule is positively related to the risk aversion indicator only. Such a result might be explained by the fact that risk-loving individuals are ready to disregard the procedural rule because they do not fear that their decision will be overturned by a higher authority, such as an appeal court in our case. Nevertheless, the significance level of that effect is quite low (5%), which leads us to favor the hypothesis that the effect of the guidelines does not depend on the individual characteristics of the subjects.
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Bourreau-Dubois, C., Doriat-Duban, M., Jeandidier, B. et al. Do child support guidelines result in lower inter-judge disparity? The case of the French advisory child support guidelines. Eur J Law Econ 55, 87–116 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-022-09749-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-022-09749-2
Keywords
- Controlled experiment
- Field experiment
- Decision making
- Child support
- Guidelines
- Judges
JEL Classification
- K42
- K15