Under the doctrine of vicarious liability, a deep-pocket principal is often held responsible for a third-party harm caused by a judgment-proof agent's negligence. We analyze the incentive contract used by the principal to control the agent's behavior when a court can make an error in determining...

A potentially dangerous product is supplied by a competitive market. The likelihood of a product-related accident depends on the unobservable precautions taken by the manufacturer and on the type of the consumer. Contracts include the price to be paid by the consumer ex ante and stipulated...

Before filing suit, a plaintiff can take a financial position in a defendant firm. A short position benefits the plaintiff by transforming a negative expected-value claim into a positive expected-value one and by enhancing the claim’s settlement value. If the capital market is less than...

With imperfect private monitoring, a firm selling two experience goods can increase both producer and consumer surplus by bundling. Bundling constrains consumers to buy two products, making consumers better informed and ensuring that they use tougher punishment strategies. Both increased...

This paper develops an auction design framework to analyze various methods for assessing “fair value” in post-merger appraisal proceedings. Our inquiry spotlights an approach recently embraced by some courts benchmarking fair value against the merger price itself. We show that merger price...