We show that parties in bilateral trade can rely on the default common law breach remedy of ‘expectation damages’ to simultaneously induce first-best relationship-specific investments of both the selfish and the cooperative kind. This can be achieved by writing a contract that specifies a...

This article examines the effect of regulatory competition in international arbitration law on the parties' choice of the place of arbitration – in other words, the extent to which countries that revise their arbitration statutes succeed in attracting parties to hold more arbitration...

This paper studies the potential impact on consumers of regulatory arbitrage based on financing of employment-based health insurance plans in the United States. Consumers enrolled in self-insured health plans, for which employers are financially responsible for medical claims, make up a majority...

Previous studies of dismissal protection have largely been based on the analysis of the rules on the books. However, actual outcomes often rely on the involvement of courts. Our model takes this feature into account and explains how relative lobbying power of unions and employer associations in...

We provide empirical insight into the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for the administration of justice. Drawing on a comprehensive monthly panel of Brazilian labor courts and using a difference-in-difference approach, we show that the pandemic has had a large and persistent deleterious...

A basic principle of law is that damages paid by a liable party should equal the harm caused by that party. However, this principle is not correct when account is taken of litigation costs, because they too are part of the social costs associated with an injury. In this article we examine the...

Agents may commit a crime twice. The act is inefficient so that the agents are to be deterred. Even if an agent is law abiding, she may still commit the act accidentally. The agents are wealth constrained. The government seeks to minimize the probability of apprehension. If the benefit from the...

We propose a novel explanation for how pre-trial mediation might increase the likelihood of settlement. The mediator verifies the plaintiff's private information about the court's judgement and communicates this to the defendant, without disclosing confidential details that would disadvantage...

The economic analysis of delay in legal procedures has received considerable attention in the past. Some of these works focus on the determinants of delay in litigation but very little analysis has been dedicated to examining if tactical delay may actually help the settlement process. The paper...

In this article, we argue that aggregate litigation and the court system can not only restore the protection of victims and the production of deterrence, but also play a pivotal role in stimulating regulatory innovation. This is accomplished through a reward system that seems largely to mimic...