We exploit a controlled frameless laboratory experiment to study settlement negotiations and the plaintiff's decision to raise a lawsuit in case of an impasse. We find that greater variance in court outcomes increases the litigation rate and lowers the settlement rate. This latter finding goes...

In litigation models, the parties' probability to succeed in a lawsuit hinge upon the merits of the parties' claims and their litigation efforts. In this paper we extend this framework to consider an important procedural aspect of the legal system: the standard of proof. We recast the...

Starting with a simple economic model of the value of civil litigation from each side's perspective, this paper analyses a wide range of potential litigation cost strategies, settlement offers and negotiations, together with relevant applications and insights from game theory. Specific issues...

This paper constructs and analyzes a simple dynamic litigation game in which two identical plaintiffs face the decision when to sue against a single defendant. The game features a property that the precedent effect from a prior litigation engenders a free-riding opportunity. We fully...

We exploit a controlled frameless laboratory experiment to study settlement negotiations and the plaintiff's decision to raise a lawsuit in case of an impasse. We find that greater variance in court outcomes increases the litigation rate and lowers the settlement rate. This latter finding goes...