Injurers often purchase the property of potential victims to avoid liability or to comply with regulations. This paper shows that injurers subject to cost-benefit standards could profit from buying out victims even if they attach no value to the victims' property. Because buyouts allow injurers...

Principals use threats to make agents accept their demands. But what if agents outnumber threats? When negotiating with agents sequentially, a principal may have to forgo some agents to make threats against others credible. This paper examines a fundamental choice that such a principal faces: to...