This Handbook chapter provides a brief review of selected settlement bargaining models in some areas where new work is developing and where additional work is likely to yield yet further important results. This work has focused on what might be thought of as the environment of the settlement...

We show that, in the context of the market for a professional service, adverse selection problems can sufficiently exacerbate moral hazard considerations so that even though all agents are risk neutral, welfare can be reduced by allowing the agent to �buy the firm� from the principal....

This chapter provides a survey of much of the recent theoretical analysis of products liability. We start by describing an idealized model and providing the specific economic assumptions which underpin it. Later sections examine the effects of relaxing these assumptions, which has been the focus...

We draw together concepts from political science, law, and economics to model discretionary actions by agents in a weak hierarchical system, wherein agents at a higher level cannot directly discipline those at a lower level. In particular, we model the decision by an appeals court judge to...

In the traditional model of the law and economics of torts, harm accrues proportional to use. This has the remarkable implication for products-generated torts that product performance concerns (e.g., issues of care and of liability for harm) can be considered independently of market performance...

This Handbook chapter provides a brief review of selected settlement bargaining models in some areas where new work is developing and where additional work is likely to yield yet further important results. This work has focused on what might be thought of as the environment of the settlement...

We examine the effect of "split-award" statutes (wherein the State takes a share of a punitive damages award) on equilibrium settlements and the incentives to go to trial. We find that split-award statutes simultaneously lower settlement amounts and the likelihood of trial, as both parties act...

Can the presence of private information in a transaction yield a Pareto-improvement over complete information? In this paper we show that the combination of multi-agent simultaneous signaling of private information, and the nature of the strategic interaction, can result in non-cooperative...

This survey of the modeling of pretrial settlement bargaining organizes current main themes and recent developments. The basic concepts used are outlined as core models and then several variations on these core models are discussed. The focus is on articles that emphasize formal models of...

Firms communicate product quality attributes to consumers through a variety of channels, such as pricing, advertising, releases of research reports and test results, or warranties and returns policies. The conceptualization of the economics of such communication is that it takes on one of two...