Does jury bias matter?

Froeb and Kobayashi (1996) find that endogenous expenditure decisions at tr ial tend to eliminate an exogenously given jury bias. For interior solution s, they find the initial bias to be totally eliminated. We find, however, t hat once the participation constraint of the plaintiff and defendant are ta ken into account, strong priors by the jury tend to deteriorate the quality of the cases which are filed by the plaintiff and defended by the defendan t. We also explore an alternative form for jury bias, and find that it is g enerally non-neutral with respect to the trial outcome. Further, we find th at the use of the English rule may exacerbate the effects of a strong jury bias. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.