An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Economic Models in Complex Litigation

Courts lack consistency and coherence in admissibility decisions regarding expert testimony based on economic models. Legal commentators have addressed the issue, but their conclusions range from treating questions about economic models as law to treating them as routine fact-finding. Evidence law bases admissibility upon the standards of the relevant field, and a substantial body of scholarship by economics methodologists conceives of models as tropes and economists as storytellers. Accordingly, models should be evaluated in the context of their use and by their target audience, which in complex litigation is the jury.

The economics scholarship therefore supports a lower admissibility threshold because challenges to the choice of underlying studies, excluded variables, and simplifying assumptions go to credibility.