法官财务持仓与案件结果：来自法官财务披露的证据

摘要

This paper examines the association between judges financial holdings and the outcome of legal cases. Using novel data on financial disclosures of judges and the civil case information of public firms across district courts in the United States between 2000 and 2021, we document multiple instances in which judges fail to recuse themselves from cases where they hold common stock in one of the parties. We find evidence that judges appear to rule more favorably when deciding over conflicted cases than when deciding over unconflicted ones. We also find that investors are positively surprised by these outcomes, as reflected by stock returns to case outcomes. The 2017 electronic disclosure reform, which made judicial financial holdings more accessible, significantly increases judges’ recusals and attenuates investor surprise. Collectively, our results provide the first large-scale evidence of the relation between judges’ financial holdings and case outcomes.