TITLE:
Re-election Concerns and the Failure of Plea Bargaining
AUTHORS:
Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, Bryan C. McCannon
KEYWORDS:
Plea Bargaining; Re-Election; Prosecutor
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.3 No.5B,
September
30,
2013
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.