The purpose of this chapter is to survey the academic literature on the economics of litigation
and to synthesize its main themes. The chapter begins by introducing the basic economic …

This is a survey of economic analysis of law, that is, of the emerging field under which the
standard tools of microeconomics are employed to identify the effects of legal rules and their …

We analyze the design of legal principles and procedures for court decision making in civil
litigation. The objective is the provision of incentives for potential tort‐feasors to exert care …

We consider models of pretrial negotiations where both costly voluntary disclosure and
costly mandatory discovery are possible. When the uninformed party makes the final offer …

The economic analysis of procedure reduces most issues to direct costs and error costs.
Direct costs are ordinary litigation costs. Error costs are the reduction in deterrence and the …

In the United States, most tort disputes are resolved prior to trial. Eisenberg and Lanvers
(2009) find that about 82 percent of tort cases filed in two federal district courts were settled …

We develop a model with asymmetric information, in which the uninformed party makes the
offer. When the parties proceed to trial, their endogenous expenditures partially determine …

This Handbook chapter provides abrief review of selected settlement bargaining models in
some areas where new work is developing and where additional work is likely to yield yet …

We provide a comparison of the adversarial and inquisitorial trial procedures. We find that
social costs associated with a given level of justice are always smaller under the adversarial …

We study the timing of settlement in patent disputes, accounting for an alleged infringer's
search for evidence to challenge patent validity. Early settlements are more likely reached …