We consider the formation and legal protection of secret agreements by analyzing a negotiated settlement between a harmed plaintiff and a culpable defendant that seeks to disenfranchise a second harmed plaintiff by keeping the existence (and details) of the instant settlement secret. This is...

We model appeals courts as Bayesian decision-makers with private information about a supreme court's interpretation of the law; each court also observes the previous decisions of other appeals courts in similar cases. Such 'persuasive influence' can cause 'herding' behavior by later appeals...