Jason Ralston

Jason Ralston

he/him

Assistant Professor of Economics

Papers

You can also find my articles on my Google Scholar profile.

Published Papers

Bias, Trust, and Trustworthiness: An Experimental Study of Post Justice System Outcomes

Published in Review of Law and Economics (Accepted), 2025

The stigma attached to any criminal record, including for those found not guilty, can lead to reduced job prospects and economic hardship long after judicial proceedings conclude. This paper examines discriminatory behavior of experimental participants who are given the opportunity to base an investment or employment decision on their trustee’s/worker’s criminal record. Similar to the real world, our experiment shows that employers and investors discriminate against those with criminal convictions. Surprisingly, we find they also discriminate against those with acquittals. We find that a subject’s reciprocity corresponds significantly to the true guilt or innocence of an accused, but not to conviction or acquittal of a crime. Because reciprocator behavior does not depend on a person’s criminal record, no rational basis exists for the observed statistical discrimination against those who have been accused. Our results raise serious concerns about the practice of using criminal records in hiring, as convictions are often poor indicators of actual culpability.

Recommended citation: Jason Ralston, Jason Aimone, Lucas Rentschler, and Charles North

Reasonable Doubt

Published in Encyclopedia of Experimental Social Science, 2024

A survey of literature on jurors reasonable doubt thresholds in experimental psychology and economics.

Recommended citation: Ralston, Jason; Hudja, Stanton. (2024). "Reasonable Doubt." Encyclopedia of Experimental Social Science. Forthcoming.
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An experimental exploration of reasonable doubt

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2023

The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard is a constitutional requirement in U.S. criminal cases, but jury instructions on “reasonable doubt” vary across jurisdictions. We use a controlled experiment to analyze the relationship between the definition of reasonable doubt and juror decisions. In our novel (pre-registered) experiment, we vary the definition of reasonable doubt between subjects and elicit the level of evidence required for subjects to convict a defendant. We analyze juror decisions under two state definitions that are markedly different (Wisconsin and West Virginia) and analyze juror decisions when reasonable doubt is not explicitly defined. We find similar behavior in each treatment. We ran three additional treatments to determine why behavior does not seem to vary across definitions. Our data is consistent with subjects having pre-conceived notions of reasonable doubt that are not affected by jury instructions.

Recommended citation: Aimone, Jason; Hudja, Stanton; Law, Wilson; North, Charles; Ralston, Jason; Rentschler, Lucas. (2023). "An experimental exploration of reasonable doubt." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. 212.
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Prosecutor plea bargaining and conviction rate structure: evidence from an experiment

Published in Public Choice, 2023

We present a model of plea bargaining and vary the value a prosecutor places on a conviction obtained via plea bargain relative to a conviction obtained at trial. We show that increasing the relative value of a plea bargain increases the trial penalty and decreases the severity of the equilibrium plea bargain. We report the results of an exploratory experiment which assesses this prediction in a more realistic setting, in which subjects are incentivized by conviction rates. Our treatment variable is whether convictions obtained via plea bargain are included in conviction rate calculations. Including plea bargains in conviction rates increases the number of plea offers made and increases the trial penalty, which is qualitatively in line with our predictions.

Recommended citation: Ralston, Jason; Aimone, Jason; Rentschler, Lucas; North, Charles (2023). "Prosecutor plea bargaining and conviction rate structure: evidence from an experiment." Public Choice. 196.
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Innovate versus imitate: Theory and experimental evidence

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2020

We model and experimentally evaluate the trade-off between innovation and imitation commonly faced by firms. Innovation involves searching for a high payoff opportunity, but paying a cost in order to do so. Imitation involves avoiding that search cost and copying the most successful payoff opportunity uncovered thus far. We formulate a novel model of sequential innovation versus imitation decisions made by a group of n regret minimizing agents. We analyze the consequences of complete versus incomplete information about the distribution of payoffs from innovation on agents’ decisions. We then study these predictions in a laboratory experiment where we find evidence in support of our theoretical predictions.

Recommended citation: Duffy, John; Ralston, Jason. (2020). "Innovate versus imitate: Theory and experimental evidence." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. 177.
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Submitted Papers

Prosecutorial Discretion: A Theoretical and Experimental Investigation

Submitted to Social Choice and Welfare (Revise and Resubmit), 2025

How does restricting prosecutorial discretion affect the criminal justice system? Many legal scholars have suggested that setting a minimum plea bargain can reduce the innocence problem (i.e., reduce the number of false convictions in the criminal justice system). We develop a model of the criminal justice system to address this suggestion. We show theoretically that setting a minimum plea bargain can both reduce the innocence problem and slightly reduce crime rates. We implement this model in a laboratory experiment and find that restricting prosecutorial discretion reduces the innocence problem, but has no effect on crime rates. Additionally, we find an unintended consequence of restricting prosecutorial discretion: there is a significant decrease in the rate at which guilty individuals accept plea bargains.

Authors: Stanton Hudja, Jason Ralston, Jason Aimone, Lucas Rentschler, and Charles North

Works in Progress