This paper revisits the issue of the unilateral divorce law, taking into account that: 1/ the decisions to engage in marriage and then to divorce or to stay married are fundamentally sequential decisions; 2/ household consumption has a large joint component, generating economies of scale. The...

Plaintiffs have either strong or weak cases. Both cases should be taken to court, yet weak cases need more work by the attorney than strong cases. Only the attorney knows whether a case needs additional work or not; the plaintiff is forced to rely on the attorney’s recommendation. We show that...

The paper investigates whether and how performance of regional commercial courts has affected external credit of Russian enterprises between 1995 and 2002. The results show that more reliable courts lead to higher bank lending to firms. This occurs predominantly through expansion of the number...

By January 1, 2005, Switzerland reduced the legal level of blood–alcohol concentration while driving from 0.8h to 0.5h. This happend on basis of the assumptions that more restrictive per mil levels increase road safety. The benefit of lower blood–alcohol levels, however, depends on whether...

The contributory infringement rule assesses liability to a third party that contributes to the infringement of a patent. Not only are firms that directly infringe liable, those who indirectly contribute are also liable. In the e-commerce world, this rule takes on an important dimension because...

We report the results of the first comparative study of the determinants and effects of patent oppositions in Europe and of re- examinations on corresponding patents issued in the United States. The analysis is based on a dataset consisting of matched EPO and US patents. Our analysis focuses on...

The aim of this paper is to determine the optimal fee contract between a plaintiff and his lawyer in a trial process where liability and damages are treated sequentially: the court determines liability at the first stage and chooses damages at the second one. The plaintiff–lawyer relationship...

We consider what we call the Sheriff of Nottingham hypothesis : that the government of Brazil, which at the same time is party to litigated cases and the enforcer of tax laws, constantly enacts norms that seek to strengthen its side. We test this hypothesis and observe that litigants adapt to...

If arbitration is to be regarded as a swift dispute resolution instrument, then the difference between the state courts procedure and the arbitral procedure must reside, primarily, in a more effective and speedier way of taking evidence, since taking evidence is the most time consuming of all...

This paper discusses the Fedon case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which involved a claim for compensation by Fedon (an Italian producer of eye glass cases) from the EU for the imposition of WTO-authorized retaliatory trade barriers by the United States following the failure by the...