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...

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 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 -...

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...

Two main results have been obtained on the literature on contractual solutions to the hold-up problem. First, a contract specifying a price and quantity of the final good to be traded will, fairly generally, induce efficient investments if these are `selfish' in nature, i.e., each party's...

When a seller gives a buyer a right of first refusal, although it reduces the competing buyers' profits and creates an inefficiency, it always increases the joint profit of the seller and the right holder. Right of first refusal with a consideration (e.g., a payment from the right holder to the...

The present article provides an economic analysis to examine how contract damages affects both breach and investment decisions over time. Unlike the standard static model, this article studies a model in which, upon signing a contract, a seller invests over two periods, and a buyer may breach at...

We explain why organizations that limit the voice of their agents can benefit from granting them an exit option. We study a hierarchy with a principal, a productive supervisor and an agent. Communication is imperfect in that only the supervisor can communicate with the principal, while the agent...