Why stare decisis?
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Publication Date
2014-10-01Journal Title
Review of Economic Dynamics
ISSN
1094-2025
Volume
17
Issue
4
Pages
726-738
Type
Article
This Version
AM
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Anderlini, L., Felli, L., & Riboni, A. (2014). Why stare decisis?. Review of Economic Dynamics, 17 (4), 726-738. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2014.02.001
Abstract
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All Courts rule ex-post, after most economic decisions are sunk. This can generate a time-inconsistency problem. From an ex-ante perspective, Courts will have the ex-post temptation to be excessively lenient. This observation is at the root of the rule of precedent, known as stare decisis.Stare decisis forces Courts to weigh the benefits of leniency towards the current parties against the beneficial effects that tougher decisions have on future ones.We study these dynamics and find that stare decisis guarantees that precedents evolve towards ex-ante efficient decisions, thus alleviating the Courts' time-inconsistency problem. However, the dynamics do not converge to full efficiency.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2014.02.001
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/299172
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Licence URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/