Abbreviated Judgments and Asymmetries
Abstract
A grand jury may refuse to indict a defendant, but never convict them; an academic paper can easily be desk-rejected but seldom desk-accepted; and in many other settings, the decision maker (DM) may make a preliminary judgment in one direction, but is required to do a more thorough review to make a judgment in the opposite direction. Here, I investigate the optimality of such asymmetric abbreviated-judgment rules, and provide informational; preference-based; and frequency-based rationales for them. In the model considered, asymmetric priors as well as asymmetric error-avoidance preferences can cause one-sided abbreviated judgment rules to be optimal. Prior asymmetries enjoy a form of dominance over preference asymmetries in determining the properties of optimal abbreviated judgment rules, which I define and explain. Moreover, these one-sided classification rules can be optimal even when the DM has symmetric priors and error-costs, because signals may be produced asymmetrically. It may also be optimal to use abbreviated judgments of both kinds, in which case the standards of proof applicable to the two abbreviated judgments may differ.
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