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...

We develop a model of pretrial bargaining under asymmetric information where both the plaintiff and the defendant’s cost of proceeding to trial is an increasing function of the judgment at trial. This contrasts with the standard assumption that costs at trial are a constant. As a result of...

We develop a model with asymmetric information, where the uninformed party makes the offer. When parties proceed to trial, their endogenous expenditures partially determine the outcome. The endogenous spending at trial can either strengthen or weaken the bargaining position of the uninformed...

We consider a model of litigation in which some defendants have insufficient assets to pay a judgment at trial. Because the defendant's assets are not observable, this serves as a source of asymmetric information which leads to trials in the equilibrium of the model. Unlike many other types of...

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...