We consider social contracts for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other's fighting potential. Applications include international conflict, litigation, and elections. Even though only a peaceful agreement avoids a loss of resources, if this loss is small enough,...

If the defendant in a lawsuit is better informed than the plaintiff about the value of damages that could potentially be assigned by the court, biasing the burden of proof toward the plaintiff may lower aggregate efficiency losses from litigation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

We consider imperfectly discriminating, common-value, all-pay auctions (or contests) in which some players know the value of the prize, others do not. We show that if the prize is always of positive value, then all players are active in equilibrium. If the prize is of value zero with positive...