Punitive damage awards have been widely criticized for their unpredictability (2004 Economic Report of the President) and for generating a plaintiff’s windfall (i.e., a payment in excess of the costs of pursuing the punitive claim), which promotes unnecessary litigation (Dodson, 2000),...

In an attempt to reduce the liability insurance costs of firms, several US states have implemented many different kinds of tort reform. Some reforms take the form of caps or limits on punitive damage awards while others have mandated that a proportion of the award be allocated to the plaintiff...

In an attempt to reduce the liability insurance costs of firms, several US states have implemented many different kinds of tort reform. Some reforms take the form of caps or limits on punitive damage awards while others, called “split-awardsâ€, have mandated that a proportion of the...

Punitive damage awards have been widely criticized for generating a plaintiff’s windfall (i.e., a payment in excess of the costs of pursuing the punitive claim), which promotes unnecessary litigation, the escalation of liability insurance premiums and over-deterrence. In an attempt to...

We study a model of civil dispute with delegation in which a plaintiff's lawyer works on a contingent fee basis but a defendant's lawyer on an hourly fee basis. We first derive the conditions under which delegation to the lawyers brings both the plaintiff and defendant more payoffs, compared to...

We consider a model of bargaining by concessions where agents can terminate negotiations by accepting the settlement of an arbitrator. The impact of pragmatic arbitrators -that enforce concessions that precede their appointment - is compared with that of arbitrators that act on principle -...

It is a well-established fact that corruption is a widespread phenomenon. An important aspect of corruption is that two parties act jointly in order to further their own interests at the expense of a third party. The response of the third party has a significant impact on the persistence of...

This paper analyzes the influence of domestic political considerations by disputing governments on the WTO enforcement outcome, following a violation ruling against the defendant. Since a different mix of import or export sectors in the disputing countries will benefit from the alternative...

This paper analyzes the impact of juvenile arrest, charge, conviction, and incarceration on an individual's propensity to graduate high school before the age of 20. The analysis is conducted using data from the NLSY97. I control for a large set of observable characteristics, including...

In this study, we use two new data sets on crime and victimisation in Argentina. The first of these is province-level official data over the period 1992-2002. The second data set is the crime victimization survey for the city of Buenos Aires and its main surburbs, which has been conducted...