This paper uses detailed data on sequential offers from seven vastly different real-world bargaining settings to document a robust pattern: agents favor offers that split the difference between the two most recent offers on the table. Our settings include negotiations for used cars, insurance...

In recent decades, sex offenders have been the targets of some of the most far-reaching and novel crime legislation in the U.S. Two key innovations have been registration and notification laws which, respectively, require that convicted sex offenders provide valid contact information to law...

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to assess the ability of an enforcement agency to detect and deter harmful short-term activities committed by groups of injurers. With ordered-leniency policies, early cooperators receive reduced sanctions. We replicate the strategic...

This paper studies the design of enforcement policies to detect and deter harmful short-term activities committed by groups of injurers. With an ordered-leniency policy, the degree of leniency granted to an injurer who self-reports depends on his or her position in the self-reporting queue. By...

In this paper we study the long-term labor market implications of school resource equalization before Brown and school desegregation after Brown. For cohorts born in the South in the 1920s and 1930s, we find that racial disparities in measurable school characteristics had a substantial influence...

This paper presents the first systematic theoretical and empirical study of high-low agreements in civil litigation. A high-low agreement is a private contract that, if signed by litigants before the conclusion of a trial, constrains any plaintiff recovery to a specified range. Whereas existing...

The Supreme Court has held repeatedly that race-based preferences in public university admissions are constitutional. But debates over the wisdom of affirmative action continue. Opponents of these policies argue that preferences are detrimental to minority students -- that by placing these...

An important criticism of race-based higher education admission preferences is that they may hurt minority students who attend more selective schools than they would in the absence of such preferences. We categorize the non-experimental research designs available for the study of so-called...

This paper explores the power of threats in the absence of binding commitment. The threatener cannot commit to carrying out the threat if the victim refuses payment, and cannot commit to not carrying out the threat if payment is made. If exercising the threat is costly to the threatener, then...

Should the manufacturer of a product be held legally responsible when a consumer, while using the product, harms someone else? We show that if consumers have deep pockets then manufacturer liability is not economically efficient. It is more efficient for the consumers themselves to bear...