Speaker: Matthew Ryan (AUT)

Title: The Jury Paradox

Date, Time and Venue: Wednesday, 7 March 2018, 14:00-15:00, 260-319 [Business School Building, Level 3]

Abstract: This talk is a sequel to last year’s discussion of Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, which is a classic result on the “wisdom of crowds”.  Timothy Feddersen and Wolfgang Pesendorfer (Am. Pol. Sci. Rev., 1998) showed that raising the hurdle for conviction (e.g., from simple majority to unanimity) may increase the probability of convicting an innocent defendant, even when all jurors regard this error as worse than that of acquitting a guilty defendant and all vote “rationally”.  The talk will explore the logic behind this “Jury Paradox”.

Everyone welcome!