St.Petersburg Economic seminar (HSE, EU, PDMI) on February, 13: Anastasia Antsygina (HSE Moscow)

Topic: Settlements under Unequal Access to Justice: Why Do Policemen in Russia Settle as Often as CEOs?
Date & Time: February, 13; 18:00 - 19:30
Venue: St Petersburg, Fontanka river embankment, 27, PDMI RAS, Marble hall (2nd floor)

Anastasia Antsygina (HSE Moscow) will give a talk on Settlements under Unequal Access to Justice: Why Do Policemen in Russia Settle as Often as CEOs?
Time: 18:00 - 19:30
Venue: St Petersburg, Fontanka river embankment, 27, PDMI RAS, Marble hall (2nd floor)

Abstract: Settlements are hailed as a cost-efficient way to resolve civil cases, but the affluent settling with the disadvantaged can also be a symptom of unequal access to justice. We develop a model where the defendant (he) decides to either settle with the victim (she) or enter the contest to win in court. In the contest, both must exert costly effort subject to resource constraints. Relaxing the defendant’s constraint has two effects. First, it allows him to make better offers and, hence, settle more often (the volume effect). Second, additional resources improve the defendant’s bargaining position forcing the victim accept lower compensation (the price effect). Exploiting the blurred line between civil and criminal litigation and the random nature of traffic collisions, we apply the model to data on criminal traffic offenses in Russia. To test for the price effect, we focus on policemen whose connections or inside knowledge affect their resource constraint in the contest stage but not in the settlement stage. Our results indicate that policemen indeed settle more often as defendants and less often as victims than a comparable resource group. The price effect can be especially worrying in the context of intentional crimes when the defendant can choose the victim.



Calendar: https://tinyurl.com/spbecon
Research seminar webpage: https://spb.hse.ru/en/scem/ilgt/hse-eusp-seminar