Prof. Dr. Dr. Yoan Hermstrüwer

Behavioral law hat sich von punktuellen Hinterfragungen innerhalb der ökonomischen Analyse zum Fundament einer Annahmenlehre für die gesamte Rechtswissenschaft entwickelt. Damit Theorie und Praxis rechtlicher Steuerung an den Wissensbestand anknüpfen können, muss man empirisches Schrifttum für juristische Zwecke erschließen. Doch auch das Recht selbst ist aus dem Blickwinkel des Denkens und Handelns von Individuen neu zu befragen. Dabei gibt es weit mehr zu entdecken als seine Konzepte vom psychischen Realbereich: Am Ende geht es um das Funktionieren einer aus menschlichen Urteilen und Entscheidungen zusammengesetzten staatlichen Praxis. Der Band widmet sich diesen Aufgaben exemplarisch für die Kernfächer des öffentlichen Rechts als »allgemeinen Teil« der rechtlichen Verhaltenssteuerung in Deutschland. Er arbeitet systematisch den Theorienkanon der verhaltenswissenschaftlichen Analyse auf, erschließt Verbindungen innerhalb des Rechtsstoffs und fragt nach neuen Möglichkeiten dogmatischer Konstruktion und Strukturierung.

Mohr Siebeck Verlag

Abstract

How fair do people perceive government decisions based on algorithmic predictions? And to what extent can the government delegate decisions to machines without sacrificing perceived procedural fairness? Using a set of vignettes in the context of predictive policing, school admissions, and refugee-matching, we explore how different degrees of human–machine interaction affect fairness perceptions and procedural preferences. We implement four treatments varying the extent of responsibility delegation to the machine and the degree of human involvement in the decision-making process, ranging from full human discretion, machine-based predictions with high human involvement, machine-based predictions with low human involvement, and fully machine-based decisions. We find that machine-based predictions with high human involvement yield the highest and fully machine-based decisions the lowest fairness scores. Different accuracy assessments can partly explain these differences. Fairness scores follow a similar pattern across contexts, with a negative level effect and lower fairness perceptions of human decisions in the context of predictive policing. Our results shed light on the behavioral foundations of several legal human-in-the-loop rules.

Link to the article

Abstract

Public school choice often yields student assignments that are neither fair nor efficient. The efficiency-adjusted deferred acceptance mechanism (EADAM) allows students to consent to waive priorities that have no effect on their assignments. A burgeoning recent literature places EADAM at the centre of the trade-off between efficiency and fairness in school choice. Meanwhile, the Flemish Ministry of Education has taken the first steps to implement this algorithm in Belgium. We provide the first experimental evidence on the performance of EADAM against the celebrated deferred acceptance mechanism (DA). We find that both efficiency and truth-telling rates are higher under EADAM than under DA, even though EADAM is not strategy-proof. When the priority waiver is enforced, efficiency further increases, while truth-telling rates decrease relative to the EADAM variants where students can dodge the waiver. Our results challenge the importance of strategy-proofness as a prerequisite for truth-telling and portend a new trade-off between efficiency and vulnerability to preference manipulation.

Link to the article

When do students game the school admissions system? It depends. Complexity may push students to refrain from manipulating their school rankings, even when the admissions system is manipulable.

Is an AI really less fair than a human decision-maker? There is a human-AI fairness gap. But an AI doing most of the work is considered as fair as a human doing all the work.

Interview on a study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods. A follow-up project involving a collaboration between the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich, Georgetown University, the University of Hong Kong and the Max Planck Institute is in the making.

Link to the interview

This workshop and lecture series is a joint project of ETH Zurich and the Universities of St. Gallen and Zurich. It is organized by Elliot Ash, Stefan Bechtold, Désirée Klingler, Yoan Hermstrüwer and Alexander Stremitzer. It provides an overview of current interdiscplinary research at the intersection of law and economics. Legal, economics, and psychology scholars give a lecture and/or present their current research. All speakers are internationally well-known experts from Europe, the U.S., and beyond.

The workshop and lecture series includes a mix of speakers who represent the wide range of current social science research methods applied to legal issues. In particular, theoretical models, empirical and experimental research as well as legal research methods are represented. This workshop and lecture series has been offered since 2003. It is offered each spring semester.

The papers presented will be made available via the course web page. For background literature, please click here.

All events are open to the public. Participants are expected to have read the papers presented in advance.

Credit requirements vary from university to university. Please consult the information on credit requirements. Information on credit requirements can be found here: Credit Requirements

For further information click here.