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Anchoring Effect in Litigation: Empirical Evidence
1 : Academia Sinica
2 : Academia Sinica
3 : Cheng-Kung University
Given its wide acceptance, it is surprising that the empirical, rather than experimental, evidence for anchoring effect is rare and inconclusive. We offer the first large-scale court evidence for anchoring in judicial decision-making. Using Taiwan's court cases on trespassing, matched with transaction data of lands and another dataset on judge experience, we provide evidence that the plaintiff's claim strongly anchors the court's judgment: Both the plaintiff's claim and defendant's counter-claim significantly influence the decisions of the less-experienced judges, but not the more-experienced judges. Therefore, we not only provide evidence for anchoring in litigation, but also suggest experience as a crucial debiaser
