An arbiter can decide a case on the basis of his priors, or the two parties to the conflict may present further evidence. The parties may misrepresent evidence in their favor at a cost. At equilibrium the two parties never testify together. When the evidence is much in favor of one party, this...

We model the settlement of a legal dispute where the trial outcome depends on the behavior of a strategically motivated judge. We consider a standard asymmetric information model where the uninformed defendant makes a take it or leave it offer. If the case goes to trial, the judge decides how...

A decision-maker relies on information of parties affected by her decision. These parties try to influence her decision by selective disclosure of facts. As is well known from the literature, competition between the informed parties constrains their ability to manipulate information. We depart...

Two firms produce a product with a horizontal and a vertical characteristic. We call the vertical characteristic quality. The difference in the quality levels determines how the firms share the market. Firms know the quality levels, consumers do not. Under non-comparative advertising a firm may...

This paper analyzes the impact of FORIS contracts on litigation and settlement decisions using a simple divergent-expectations model. A FORIS contract introduces contingent fee arrangements under the British legal cost allocation rule: the plaintiff pays a percentage of his settlement or trial...

We present, for the first time, a model of recent institutional developments in litigation funding across several European jurisdictions. Recognizing the financing constraints that British cost rules may impose on litigants, these new contractual arrangements combine contingency fees with third...

The appellate review system is intended to serve as an efficient remedy for imperfect judicial decision making. However, it can fulfill this task only when appeals are filed solely due to bad verdicts and are ex-ante unpredictable based on factors that are exogenous to the judge. Using data from...

We analyze the impact of prosecutor elections on case backlogs. Previous evidence has shown that re-election pressures result in more cases going to trial. Since trials require time and resources, one can expect an effect on the queue. Two competing theories are developed: one of signaling...