The analysis of horizontal mergers hinges on a tradeoff between unilateral effects and efficiency gains. The article examines the role of uncertainty (on the efficiency gains) in this tradeoff. Common wisdom is that the antitrust authorities should be very cautious about random gains. Our...

Contributing to the literature on the consequences of behavioral biases for market outcomes and institutional design, we contrast producer liability and minimum quality standard regulation as alternative means of social control of product-related torts when consumers are heterogeneously...

This paper explores the impact of product liability on vertical product differentiation when product safety is perfectly observable. In a two-stage competition, duopolistic firms are subject to strict liability and segment the market such that a low-safety product is marketed at a low price to...

We focus in this paper on the effects of court errors on the optimal sharing of liability between firms and financiers, as an environmental policy instrument. Using a structural model of the interactions between firms, financial institutions, governments and courts we show, through numerical...

This paper analyzes the output, abatement, and investment decisions made by a monopolistic polluter under environmental liability law. The model applied considers both integrated and end-of-pipe abatement technologies. We find that in the case of fixed technology, in many instances negligence...

I develop a stylized model of court procedures that resolve disputes concerning FRAND-encumbered standard essential patents (SEPs). I analyze the effects of injunctions and potential court-imposed FRAND rates on negotiated royalty rates. The SEP-holders’ ability to hold-up is constrained by...

Despite the judiciary’s central role in the capitalist market system, micro-level empirical analyses of courts in post-socialist countries are remarkably rare. This paper draws on a unique hand-collected dataset of commercial claims filed at Slovenian courts to examine the determinants of two...

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...

Legal philosophers like Montesquieu, Hegel and Tocqueville have argued that lay participation in judicial decision-making would have benefits reaching far beyond the realm of the legal system narrowly understood. From an economic point of view, lay participation in judicial decision-making can...

History is replete with overt discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, citizenship, ethnicity, marital status, academic performance, health status, volume of market transactions, religion, sexual orientation, etc. However, these forms of discrimination are not equally tolerable. For...