Gender diversity and teams' decision-making
Abstract:
We investigate how gender composition of teams affects the decision-making process and the quality of decisions, using a novel database on the universe of collegial rulings fro m a sample of first- and second-instance criminal courts in Italy. Leveragi ng the quasi-random allocation of both judges and cases to judicial teams, we document three main findings. First, all-women teams have higher convict ion rates than both mixed-gender and all-men teams. Second, all-men teams c onverge faster to a decision than any other team composition. Third, decisi ons made by all-men teams are more likely to be incorrect, as indicated by a higher likelihood of being appealed and subsequently overturned, whereas no significant difference in decision quality is observed between mixed-gen der and all-women teams. To explain these results, we propose a framework o f team decision-making where individuals differ in both preferences and dia gnostic skills. The observed relationship between conviction and overturn r ates, together with the analysis of written judicial opinions, supports the conclusion that variations in effort, rather than preferences, drive our r esults.
DTSTAMP:20260526T005453Z DTSTART:20250630T130000Z DTEND:20250630T140000Z SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR