A risk science perspective on liability/guilt and uncertainty judgements in courts

This article aims to provide new insights about risk and uncertainty in law contexts, by incorporating ideas and principles of contemporary risk science. The main focus is on one particular aspect of the law: its operation in courts where a defendant has been charged with a violation of civil or criminal law. Judgements about risk and uncertainty—typically using the probability concept—and how these relate to the evidence play a central role in such situations. The decision on whether the defendant is liable/guilty or not may strongly depend on how these concepts are understood and communicated. Considerable work has been conducted to provide theoretical and practical foundations for the risk and uncertainty characterizations in these contexts. Yet, it can be argued that a proper foundation for linking the evidence and the uncertainty (probability) judgements is lacking, the result being poor communication in courts about risk and uncertainties. The present article seeks to clarify what the problems are and provide guidance on how to rectify them.     

DO PRICES TRANSMIT RATIONALLY EXPECTED INFORMATION?

A simple model with asymmetric information, in which inventory holders or traders submit demand curves to an auctioneer, has a unique partially revealing equilibrium. We wonder whether the agents can plausibly coordinate on this equilibrium through “eductive” reasoning relying on common knowledge. The analysis stresses the role of two effects, sensitivity and amplification, whose product should be small enough. The property is obtained whenever the equilibrium excess demand is steep enough, i.e., when the search for information does not distort demand too much. Neither the influence of the number of informed agents nor that of noise trading are monotonic. Real‐time learning has strikingly different features. (JEL: D82, D84)     

MEASURING FACTORY FOCUS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Focus in the manufacturing plant is generally deemed to be an important element of success in manufacturing strategy. Yet, little work has been completed in the measurement of plant focus and a dearth of empirical evidence exists to support the broad popularity of this concept. This paper presents a plant focus measurement approach and reports the results of a field study that uses a site visit research design to apply the focus measure to a multi-industry sample of manufacturing plants. Regression analysis is used to study the relationships between the plant focus variable and the environmental variables of plant size, number of product lines, plant age, number of processes, and type of processes. Although highly intuitive, these relationships have undergone very little empirical study in the literature. Our study provides evidence of a strong logarithmic relationship between our plant focus measure and the number of product lines. Support is also demonstrated in that our measure of plant focus is linked to the number and type of manufacturing processes. However, the variables of plant age and plant size do not appear related to the plant focus measure. The literature-based multicriteria focus measure can be used by managers and researchers as an objective, formal, and generalizable approach for assessing plant focus, for identifying areas in the plant that detract from focus, and for tracking focus improvement efforts over time.     

Erratum: A Model of Site‐Specific Antecedents of ISO 14001 Certification

This erratum is to correct the authorship of the article by Melnyk, Sroufe, and Calantone (2003). Frank Montabon is also one of the co‐authors of the article, and his name was inadvertently omitted from the list of authors. He should be listed as a co‐author of the article.