Judges become ambitious decision makers when they face appellate review. This paper applies a contract theoretic perspective to the behavior of self-interested trial judges in a twolevel court system and analyzes the consequences for contracting in 'the shadow of' the court. Confronted with the...

Judges become ambitious decision makers when they face appellate review. This paper applies a contract theoretic perspective to the behavior of self-interested trial judges in a two-level court system and analyzes the consequences for contracting in “the shadow of” the court. Confronted with...

The appellate review system is intended to serve as an efficient remedy for imperfect judicial decision making. However, it can fulfill this task only when appeals are filed solely due to bad verdicts and are ex-ante unpredictable based on factors that are exogenous to the judge. Using data from...

The Landscape of Civil Litigation of State Courts examined case characteristics and outcomes for civil cases disposed during a one-year interval from all courts exercising jurisdiction over civil cases in 10 urban counties in the United States. This report is the first significant...

This paper exploits the diversity of panels at the court of appeals in the state of São Paulo to address the role of career backgrounds and ideology in shaping the response of judicial decisions to a major shift in jurisprudence on drug offenses. The Brazilian constitution reserves 80% of the...

This chapter surveys major issues arising in the economic analysis of contract law. It begins with an introductory discussion of scope and methodology, and then addresses four main topics that correspond to the major doctrinal divisions of the law of contracts. These divisions include freedom of...

Rational parties enter into a contract if the agreement is mutually beneficial. However, after the contract is formed, changes to the costs and/or benefits of performance may render the original contract undesirable. In this paper, we carry out an incentivized experiment to study the effect of...