Settlements are often considered to be welfare-enhancing because they save time and litigation costs. In the presence … which will not occur if a dispute is settled out of court. Focusing on private litigation, we examine the impact of court … offset the positive externality of litigation. …

and deters parties from settling disputes out of court. In contrast, the law is certain ex post: litigation fosters the … of a legal system (kept under control by litigation) and its litigation rate (sustained by uncertainty). We describe such … equilibrium rates in a model of tort litigation, study how they are affected by different policies, and compare the costs and …

litigation process. We begin with a review of studies of aggregate empirical trends and the important issues involving contracts …

The purpose of this chapter is to survey the academic literature on the economics of litigation and to synthesize its … main themes. The chapter begins by introducing the basic economic framework for studying litigation and out … also addressed. Are the litigation decisions made by private parties in the interest of society as a whole? Next, the …

. Fourth, we treat the subject of civil litigation, that is, the bringing of lawsuits, and their settlement or disposition at … additional topics relating to litigation. Fifth, we consider public enforcement of law, focusing on the level of law enforcement …

This paper studies how litigation and settlement behavior is affected by agents motivated by spiteful preferences under … the American and the English fee-shifting rule. We conduct an experiment and find that litigation expenditures and … settlement requests are higher for more spiteful participants. The relative increase in litigation expenditures due to spite is …