It is commonly alleged that a substantial proportion of lawsuits are frivolous and are filed only for their nuisance value. This paper models settlement bargaining in the presence of frivolous suits as a game of asymmetric information, where the plaintiff knows the true merits of his claim, and the defendant does not, apart from any inferences he can draw from the fact of suit. When there is fr...

We use data from a large US life expectancy provider to test for asymmetric information in the secondary life insurance—or life settlement—market. We compare the average difference between realized lifetimes and estimated life expectancies for a sub-sample of settled policies relative to the entire sample. We find a significant positive difference indicating private information on mortality pro...

We study the terms of credit in a competitive market in which sellers (lenders) are willing to repeatedly …nance the purchases of buyers (borrowers) by engaging in a credit relationship. The key frictions are: (i) the lender is unable to observe the borrower’s ability to repay a loan; (ii) the borrower cannot commit to any long-term contract; (iii) it is costly for the lender to contact a borro...

We identify two features of final offer arbitration (FOA) which may impede settlement in a bargaining game where asymmetric information drives the failure to settle. First, under FOA the informed party has an incentive not to voluntarily reveal private information. Revealing this information allows the previously uninformed party to submit a superior offer to the arbitrator to the detriment of ...

We study optimal methods for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), a technique to achieve settlement and avoid costly adversarial hearings. Participation is voluntary. Disputants are privately informed about their marginal cost of evidence provision. If ADR fails engender settlement, the disputants can use information obtained during determine what provide in an hearing. Optimal induces asymmet...

We genotyped 24 biallelic sites and 5 microsatellites from the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome in 652 males from the Canary Islands. The results indicate that, contrary to mtDNA data, paternal lineages of the current population are overwhelmingly (>90%) of European origin, arguing for a highly asymmetric pattern of mating after European occupation. However, the presence of lineages ...

Electricity markets face a substantial amount of uncertainty. While traditionally this uncertainty has been due to varying demand, with the integration of larger proportions of volatile renewable energy, added uncertainty from generation must also be faced. Conventional electricity market designs cope with uncertainty by running two markets: a market that is cleared ahead of time, followed by a...

THE 1959 Mental Health Act emphasises the need to integrate psychiatric patients with the community at large rather than to isolate them from it, as hitherto. This identification with the normal community has been the Ministry of Labour's approach to the employment of disabled people since the time of the Disabled Persons (Employment) <4ct of 1944. For the past 17 years all disabled people, whe...

What is the appropriate informational structure when modeling the lawsuit? In numerous papers stretching back almost 30 years litigation has been portrayed as a game involving incomplete, sometimes asymmetric information. That information is incomplete is beyond question. Clients, in conjunction with their attorneys, must make decisions on filing and settlement in the presence of uncertainty ab...

Increasing settlement and post-settlement survival during the critical transition from planktonic larvae to benthic juveniles will increase efficiency for sea urchin aquaculture. This study investigated the effects of temperature and settlement cues on the settlement and post-settlement survival of the sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla during this phase. The current commercial methodology, which ...