We investigate negotiations over real estate and find that men secure better prices than women when negotiating to buy and sell property. However, the gender difference declines substantially when improving controls for the property's value; and is eliminated when controlling for unobserved...

Gender differences in the propensity to negotiate are often used to explain the gender wage gap, popularizing the push for women to "lean-in." We use a laboratory experiment to examine the effect of leaning-in. Despite men and women achieving similar and positive returns when they must...

Medellin's government wanted to raise its efficacy, legitimacy, and control. The city identified 80 neighborhoods with weak state presence and competing armed actors. In half, they increased non-police street presence tenfold for two years, offering social services and dispute resolution. In...

This paper analyses data on union and employer rankings of different panels of arbitrators in an actual arbitration system. A random utility model of bargainer preferences is developed and estimated. The estimates indicate that unions and employers have similar preferences, in favor of lawyers,...

An important milestone often reached in the life of an activist engagement is entering into a "settlement" agreement between the activist and the target's board. Using a comprehensive hand-collected data set, we analyze the drivers, nature, and consequences of such settlement agreements....

International investment agreements employ dispute settlement procedures that differ markedly from their counterparts in trade agreements along three key dimensions: standing (i.e., the right to file grievances), the nature of the remedy, and the remedial period. In the state-to-state dispute...

The goal of this paper is to explore the possibility that the costs and benefits of legal representation are structured so that each individual party seeks legal representation in the hope of exploiting the other party, while knowing full well that failing to do so will open up the possibility...

Informal institutions govern property rights and disputes when formal systems are weak. Well-functioning institutions should help people reach and maintain bargains, minimizing violence. Can outside organizations engineer improvements and reduce violent conflicts? Will this improve property...

Effective dispute resolution is important for reducing private and social costs. We study how resolution responds to changes in price and communication using a new, extensive dataset of copyright infringement incidences by firms. The data cover two field experiments run by a large...