In Final Offer Arbitration, both parties submit a proposal to an arbitrator. In the event the parties cannot reach a negotiated settlement, the arbitrator chooses the submitted proposal that is closest to her preferred settlement. In such a model, asymmetric information can lead to costly...

We conduct an experimental analysis of pretrial bargaining, while allowing for the costly disclosure of private information in a signaling game. Under the theory, 100% of plaintiffs with a weak case are predicted to remain silent, while 100% of the plaintiffs with a strong case are predicted to...

We conduct an experimental analysis of discovery in both the signaling and screening games, where in both games an uninformed defendant may engage in costly discovery. Under the theory, the defendant should invoke the costly discovery procedure in the screening game, but not in the signaling...

We conduct an experimental analysis of final offer arbitration (FOA) with differentially informed players. Under FOA, the arbitrator must choose one of the two submitted offers. In our control, the uninformed player makes an offer to the informed player prior to the submission of offers to the...

We present an experimental analysis of the signaling and screening models of litigation. In both models, bargaining failure is driven by asymmetric information. The difference between the models lies in the bargaining structure: In the signaling game, the informed party makes the final offer,...

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...

We embed an ultimatum game in a stylized legal bargaining framework. This changes the framing of the standard ultimatum game in several ways, but also moves the bargaining closer to what is found in some naturally occurring settings. In this context, the ultimatum game is played over the joint...

We conduct an experimental analysis of pretrial bargaining, while allowing for the costly voluntary disclosure of private information in a screening game. In this game, the theoretical prediction is that costly voluntary disclosures will not occur. This hinges on the prediction that the person...

We conduct a bargaining experiment where the dispute resolution mechanism can be interpreted as a civil trial or conventional arbitration. The game involves a take-it-or-leave-it bargaining structure, and therefore contains an embedded ultimatum game. The sum of the dispute costs is constant,...

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...