Re-election Concerns and the Failure of Plea Bargaining

Abstract

In this note, we provide a new explanation for the “failure” of plea bargaining. We show in a model of asymmetric information that a public prosecutor facing re-election takes cases to the courtroom to signal quality even when her welfare (absent retention motivation) is always higher from plea bargaining.

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S. Bandyopadhyay and B. McCannon, "Re-election Concerns and the Failure of Plea Bargaining," Theoretical Economics Letters, Vol. 3 No. 5B, 2013, pp. 40-44. doi: 10.4236/tel.2013.35A2007.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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