We examine a setting in which property rights are initially ambiguously defined. Whether the parties go to court to remove the ambiguity or bargain and settle privately, they incur enforcement costs. When the parties bargain, a version of the Coase theorem holds. Despite the additional costs of...

When market distortions already exist, producers may attempt to surpress or encourage the establishment of new distortions in hitherto undistorted markets, and may have a strong incentive to appeal to the language of second best to further their private interests. In these situations, the total...

Contests are games in which the players compete for a valuable prize by exerting effort or using resources so as to increase their probability of winning. This paper examines two player multi-item contests, a class of games in which players are faced with a decision about how much of a given...

We examine a setting in which property rights are initially ambiguously defined. Whether the parties go to court to remove the ambiguity or bargain and settle privately, they incur enforcement costs. When the parties bargain, a version of the Coase theorem holds. Despite the additional costs of...

Indices of voting power are intended to measure the a priori degree of in.uence that a voter or party can expect to have in framing legislation or passing motions. Commonly used measures include those proposed by Shapley and Shubik (1954), Banzhaf (1965) and Deegan and Packel (1978). This paper...

Several recent papers argue that contracts provide reference points that affect ex post behavior. We test this hypothesis in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and...