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Pre-Trial Bargaining and Litigation: The Search for Fairness and Efficiency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Robert M. Howard ,
Richard E. Chard ,
Joel T. Kaji  and
Jeffrey Davis
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Abstract

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The formal literature on pre-trial bargaining offers considerable insight on how different bargaining procedures asymmetric information affect efficiency. Less attention has been paid to fairness, despite the fact that fairness is an essential component of any system of justice. We address this state of affairs by analyzing the equilibria of a pre-trial bargaining model for both fairness and efficiency. This analysis involves ascertaining whether fair and efficient equilibria are possible and whether they occur for common parameter values, and characterizing their behavioral and distributional properties. We conclude that fairness is a paramount concern to litigants and society and that fair and efficient equilibria are possible.

Type
Research on Legal Services
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , 2000 , pp. 431 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Law and Society Association

Footnotes

We would like to thank Jeff Segal, David Nixon, John Scholz, Richard Timpone, David Epstein, and John De Figueiredo for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

References

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