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...

This paper studies experimentally the impact of the split-award statute, where the state takes a share of the plaintiff's punitive damage award, on litigation outcomes. Our findings indicate that dispute rates are significantly lower when bargaining is performed under the split-award...

This paper reports the results of a bargaining experiment. We follow the pretrial bargaining model of Gertner and Miller (1995) under uncertainty and examine the effect of a litigation institution, called a settlement escrow and uncertainty on the timing and quality of settlement outcomes. Our...