This paper characterizes equilibrium outcomes of extensive form games with incomplete information in which players can sign renegotiable contracts with third-parties. Our aim is to understand the extent to which third-party contracts can be used as commitment devices when it is impossible to...

We exploit a controlled frameless laboratory experiment to study settlement negotiations and the plaintiff's decision to raise a lawsuit in case of an impasse. We find that greater variance in court outcomes increases the litigation rate and lowers the settlement rate. This latter finding goes...

The legal community has been debating the question of who should select and provide expert witnesses at trial: the litigant or the judge? Using a persuasion-game framework, I show that there is a trade-off. On the one hand, the litigant is willing to consult an expert even when the judge is...

This paper experimentally studies stipulated damages as a rent-extraction mechanism. We demonstrate that contract renegotiation induces the sellers to propose the lowest stipulated damages and the entrants to offer the highest price more frequently. We show that complete information about the...

I study the optimal audit mechanism when the principal cannot commit to an audit strategy. Invoking a relevation principle, the agent reports her type to a mediator whi assigns contracts and recommends the principla whether to audit. For each reported type the mediator randomizes over a...

This paper discusses the strategic role of mismatching, where players voluntarily form inefficient teams or forego the formation of efficient teams, respectively. Strategic mismatching can be rational when players realize a competitive advantage (e.g. harming other competitors). In addition, the...

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

This paper considers dynamic games in which multiple principals contract sequentially and non-cooperatively with the same agent. We first show that when contracting is private, i.e. when downstream principals observe neither the mechanisms offered upstream nor the decisions taken in these...

We study credence goods markets where an expert not only cares for her own monetary payoff, but also for the monetary payoff of her customer. We show how an expert with heterogeneous distributional preferences responds to monetary incentives in the absence of institutions, under liability and/or...