时间：2024年5月10日10点

地点：邵逸夫科学馆401

主讲人：蔡熙乾

题目：Numbers Don’t Lie, But Brains Might: How Left-digit Bias Skews Judicial Outcomes in Court

内容摘要：Since numerical assessment is widely used in judicial decision-making, systematic biases in numerical assessment can harm the integrity of justice offered by courts, and hence the quality of justice. This study investigates the left-digit bias—a form of inattention bias due to the anchoring heuristic—by applying a regression discontinuity design to a comprehensive dataset of judicial verdicts for drunk driving offenses in China. We find evidence of left-digit bias among judges, highlighted by significant discontinuities in the durations of imprisonment and fine amounts at 10-mg/100 ml integer thresholds of blood alcohol content. The findings suggest that judges do not fully pay attention when evaluating crucial evidence for judicial decision-making, allocating 55.5% (63.4%) of their attention to the default blood alcohol content values and the rest to the actual values when determining penalties for imprisonment (fine amounts). These biases occur regardless of case severity, judge attributes, or defendant characteristics when these features are unrelated to attention. Our study sheds light on a critical aspect of human decision-making: the split of attention between the real, complex model (or value) and the default, simplified one, leading to cognitive biases and affecting social and judicial justice.

专家简介：蔡熙乾，厦门大学经济学院和王亚南经济研究院教授、博士生导师，经济研究所所长。主要研究领域为行为经济学、劳动经济学与中国经济。主持国家自然科学基金优秀青年基金、国家自科青年基金等项目。主要论文发表在《中国社会科学》，《世界经济》，Review of Economics and Statistics, Management Science, Journal of Development Economics, Psychological Science等国内外权威期刊。多项研究成果获福建省社会科学优秀成果奖，山东省社会科学优秀成果奖。担任期刊China & World Economy副主编，《中国经济问题》副主编。