We introduce fairness into three models of pretrial settlement and find that it increases the incidence of trial in each. This is true despite the fact that the fairness taste parameter is common knowledge. In the standard model, the party who makes the final offer can extract essentially all of...

We investigate policy reform in a model in which there are both rent seeking and lobbying activities. These two activities involve similar skills, so a reform which reduces rents will cause a shift into lobbying. Also, lobbying is subject to a free-rider problem, so the marginal return to the...

We analyze contingency fees in the Reinganum and Wilde (1986) signaling model of litigation. The effect of contingency fees on settlement depends upon the details of the contingency fee contract and the nature of the informational asymmetry assumed in the model. Introducing bifurcated fee...

In the standard model, provision of a pure public good is increasing in group size if it is a normal good. I develop a model of public good provision in which private goods are supplied in a monopolistically competitive market. In this context, increases in the size of the group are increases in...

We conduct a bargaining experiment where the dispute resolution mechanism can be interpreted as a civil trial or conventional arbitration. The game involves a take-it-or-leave-it bargaining structure, and therefore contains an embedded ultimatum game. The sum of the dispute costs is constant,...

Asymmetric information on preferences is a potentially important explanation of bargaining failure. Preferences are not directly observable and information about preferences may be difficult to credibly establish to a bargaining partner. Unobserved preferences which may be relevant for pretrial...

We embed an ultimatum game in a stylized legal bargaining framework. This changes the framing of the standard ultimatum game in several ways, but also moves the bargaining closer to what is found in some naturally occurring settings. In this context, the ultimatum game is played over the joint...

In the standard model of a rent-seeking contest, firms optimally employ resources in an attempt to win the contest and obtain the rent. Typically, it is assumed that these resources may be hired at any desired level at some fixed, exogenous per-unit cost. In many real-world rent-seeking...

Recent work by Pecorino (1998, 1999) and Esteban and Ray (2001) has called into question one of the central propositions of Olson (1965) relating public good provision to group size. Pecorino addresses this issue in a repeated game context, while Esteban and Ray introduce a technology under...

In this paper, it is argued that the college textbook market provides a clear example of monopoly seeking as described by Tullock (1967, 1980). This behavior is also known as rent seeking. Since this market is important to students, this example of rent seeking will be of particular interest to them