Errors and monotonicity in judicial decision-making

Abstract

Recent literature raises concerns about monotonicity conditions required to interpret IV estimates under heterogeneous effects. A prominent example involves random decision-maker IV designs where decision-makers exhibit systematic differences in both preferences and skills. We develop tests of monotonicity in the context of judicial decision-making using proxies of judicial errors based on appeals and reversals of trial decisions from Norwegian court records. Our tests fail to reject average monotonicity. This suggests that differences in stringencies across judges are not sufficiently driven by skills to raise concerns about the validity of the random judge IV literature.