Multitasking, Multiarmed Bandits, and the Italian Judiciary
将法官的案件排期建模为多臂老虎机问题，发现先入先出（FIFO）策略在案件完成风险率单调时最优，但具体实施方式（按听证会还是按案件）取决于风险率变化方向。在意大利罗马劳动上诉法院的实地实验中，将排期从听证会级FIFO改为案件级FIFO，使案件平均审理时长降低12%，上诉概率降低3.8%。
We model how a judge schedules cases as a multiarmed bandit problem. The model indicates that a first-in-first-out (FIFO) scheduling policy is optimal when the case completion hazard rate function is monotonic. But there are two ways to implement FIFO in this context: at the hearing level or at the case level. Our model indicates that the former policy, prioritizing the oldest hearing, is optimal when the case completion hazard rate function decreases, and the latter policy, prioritizing the oldest case, is optimal when the case completion hazard rate function increases. This result convinced six judges of the Roman Labor Court of Appeals—a court that exhibits increasing hazard rates—to switch from hearing-level FIFO to case-level FIFO. Tracking these judges for eight years, we estimate that our intervention decreased the average case duration by 12% and the probability of a decision being appealed to the Italian supreme court by 3.8%, relative to a 44-judge control sample.