Judges and Court Productivity: Evidence from Spanish Labour Courts

Abstract This paper aims to determine if the number and the type of judges acting in the court have a significant effect on courts’ productivity, proxied by the “Resolution Rate”. From a methodological point of view, the acting of other judges in the court, besides the incumbent judge, will be considered as a treatment. To account for the effects, impact evaluation techniques will be used. In addition, different control covariates as economic determinants and other factors closely related to the judicial activity will be empirically analysed, taking into account possible endogeneity problems related to the treatment variable. For this purpose, we will use the annual judicial statistic published by the General Council of the Judiciary with information from almost 350 Spanish Social Courts from 2005 to 2019.