This paper studies alternative contract damage measures in the presence of specific investments that generate a direct benefit to the investor's trading partner (referred to as "cooperative investments"). We find that, both with and without the possibility of ex post renegotiation, (i) the...

This paper considers settlement negotiations between a single defendant and N plaintiffs when there are Fixed costs of litigation. When making simultaneous take-it-or-leave-it offers to the plaintiffs, the defendant adopts a divide and conquer strategy. Plaintiffs settle their claims for less...

Utilizing a novel dataset from an online travel intermediary, we study the effects of EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The opt-in requirement of GDPR resulted in 12.5% drop in the intermediary-observed consumers, but the remaining consumers are trackable for a longer period of...

This paper studies the effects of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on the ability of firms to collect consumer data, identify consumers over time, accrue revenue via online advertising, and predict their behavior. Utilizing a novel dataset by an intermediary that spans much...

We develop a model of bailout stigma in which accepting bailouts may signal firms' financial troubles and worsen subsequent financing conditions. Bailout stigma can lead to low or even no take-up of otherwise attractive bailout offers, the failure of immediate market revival, or a government...

A "decoupled" liability system is one in which the award to the plaintiff differs from the payment by the defendant. The optimal system of decoupling makes the defendant's payment as high as possible. Such a policy allows the award to the plaintiff to be lowered, thereby reducing the plaintiff's...

A principal chooses one of n ≥ 2 projects or an outside option. An agent is privately informed about the projects' benefits and shares the principal's preferences except for not internalizing her value from the outside option. We show that strategic communication is characterized by...

We develop a network-flow approach for characterizing interim-allocation rules that can be implemented by ex post allocations. Our method can be used to characterize feasible interim allocations in general multi-unit auctions where agents face capacity constraints, both ceilings and floors....