We consider models of pretrial negotiations where both costly voluntary disclosure and costly mandatory discovery are possible. When the uninformed party makes the final offer (the screening game), mandatory discovery will be utilized, if it is not very costly, but voluntary disclosure will not...

We conduct an experimental analysis of bargaining under asymmetric information, where the dispute resolution mechanism can be interpreted either as a civil trial or conventional arbitration. In our treatment, we allow for credible and costless transmission of private information. Consistent with...

Much of the law and economics literature, including Bebchuk (1984) and Reinganum and Wilde (1986), explains settlement failure in bargaining as a consequence of asymmetric information. An alternative, non-strategic explanation found in Shavell (1982) suggests that settlement failure stems from...

We extend the signaling model of Reinganum and Wilde (1986) by allowing for the possibility of negative expected value (NEV) suits. If filing costs are positive, then there exists a separating equilibrium such that plaintiffs with NEV suits choose not to file. By making the filing decision...

As a result of public outrage over lower prescription drug prices in Canada, Congress passed legislation that would allow these drugs to be imported into the United States. The lower Canadian prices reflect price regulation. Opponents of allowing these imports have argued that the U.S. will...

We examine the behavior of the incarceration rate and the racial disparity in imprisonment for black women and compare this to the results for black men over the period 1978-2016. At the beginning of our sample, the racial disparity is high and of similar magnitude for both groups. Black women...

We identify two features of final offer arbitration (FOA) which may impede settlement in a bargaining game where asymmetric information drives the failure to settle. First, under FOA, the informed party has an incentive to conceal private information about the expected outcome in arbitration...

A government sets the level of taxation in order to provide a public good valued by consumers. There are two groups of consumers, the rich and the poor. The government has redistributive preferences, but is initially constrained to use lump sum taxation. This potentially leads the government to...

We conduct an experimental analysis of signaling games using three models of arbitration. In the signaling model, the informed party in the dispute makes a settlement demand to the uninformed party. In conventional arbitration (CA), the arbitrator is free to impose her preferred settlement. In...

Individuals engaged in rent seeking accumulate sector specific human capital through learning-by-doing. If agents specialize, small reforms of the trade regime may fail to reduce the level of the rent-seeking activity. The size of the reform necessary to induce movement out of rent seeking is...