Ex post ≠ ex ante: Determining liability in hindsight
Kim Kamin and Jeffrey Rachlinski compared three conditions: foresight, hindsight and a hindsight condition meant to reduce the bias. Participants judged whether a municipality should take, or should have taken, precautions to protect a property owner from flood damage. Foresight participants reviewed the evidence in an administrative hearing and hindsight participants reviewed parallel materials in a trial. About three-quarters of the foresight participants judged the flood too unlikely to justify further precautions, most hindsight participants judged the same decision negligent, and hindsight participants gave higher estimates of the probability of the disaster. The debiasing procedure made no significant difference. The authors conclude that risk assessments made in foresight will be judged harshly in hindsight without an effective debiasing technique.
Kim Kamin and Jeffrey Rachlinski compared three conditions: foresight, hindsight and a hindsight condition meant to reduce the bias. Participants judged whether a municipality should take, or should have taken, precautions to protect a property owner from flood damage. Foresight participants reviewed the evidence in an administrative hearing and hindsight participants reviewed parallel materials in a trial. About three-quarters of the foresight participants judged the flood too unlikely to justify further precautions, most hindsight participants judged the same decision negligent, and hindsight participants gave higher estimates of the probability of the disaster. The debiasing procedure made no significant difference. The authors conclude that risk assessments made in foresight will be judged harshly in hindsight without an effective debiasing technique.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-22 via the Cornell Law School repository record.
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doi:10.1007/BF01499075. Read at the level of the published abstract.