Do the parties in a typical dispute face incentives similar to those in the classic prisoner's dilemma game? In this paper, we explore whether the costs and benefits of legal representation are such that each party seeks legal representation in the hope of exploiting the other party, while...

The paper attempts to explain the failure of postcommunist traders exemplified by Balkan traders to make use of arbitration courts by means of the rational choice of forum approach offered by the law and economics movement. Conjectures about traders? behaviour derived by combining this approach...

A series of experiments compares bargaining behavior under three different settings: no arbitration, conventional and final offer arbitration. Under no arbitration disputes with zero payoffs were around 10%, while the pie was equally split in less than half of the cases. Under conventional...

Das Ombudsmannverfahren des Bundesverbandes deutscher Banken feiert am 1. Juli 2002 sein zehnjähriges Jubiläum. Das Jubiläum liefert eine willkommene Gelegenheit zur kritischen Bestandsaufnahme. Zudem soll der tiefergehenden Frage nachgegangen werden, ob sich die mit der Einführung des...

Legal institutions play an important role in affecting delay in settlement. But little research has investigated the institutional causes of delay. The empirical literature is ambiguous regarding the impact of trial-court delay on settlement delay. I analyze the timing of bargaining and the...

There have long been claims that compensations for noneconomic damages are random because tort law does not provide clear guidance regarding these compensations. I investigate, in both settled and tried medical malpractice cases, whether noneconomic damage payments are arbitrary and what...

This paper deals with the effects that intermediation has on strategic behaviour in negotiations. To this end, we use the tools of game theory to analyse how different institutional settings can provide specific strategic incentives and thereby condition the outcome of negotiations. We...

Analyzing the neutrality of referees during nine German premier league (1. Bundesliga) soccer seasons, this paper documents evidence that social forces influence agents' preferences and decisions. Those, who are appointed to be impartial, tend to favor the home team as they systematically award...

This paper studies how social pressure affects the behavior of soccer referees. We make use of an attractive source of exogenous variation in the number of spectators at matches. Due to recent hooligan violence, the Italian government has implemented a regulation that forces some soccer teams to...

This paper examines the strategic effects of case preparation in litigation. Specifically, it shows how the pretrial efforts incurred by one party may alter its adversary's incentives to settle. We build a sequential game with one-sided asymmetric information where the informed party first...