Self-Serving Assessments of Fairness and Pretrial Bargaining

A persistently troubling question in the legal-economic literature is why cases proceed to trial. Litigation is a negative-sum proposition for the litigants-the longer the process continues, the lower their aggregate wealth. Although civil litigation is resolved by settlement in an estimated 95 percent of all disputes, what accounts for the failure of the remaining 5 percent to settle prior to trial

Labor Supply of New York City Cabdrivers: One Day at a Time

Life-cycle models of labor supply predict a positive relationship between hours supplied and transitory changes in wages. We tested this prediction using three samples of wages and hours of New York City cabdrivers, whose wages are correlated within days but uncorrelated between days. Estimated wage elasticities are significantly negative in two out of three samples. Elasticities of inexperienced drivers average approximately −1 and are less than zero in all three samples (and significantly less than for experienced drivers in two of three samples). Our interpretation of these findings is that cabdrivers (at least inexperienced ones): (i) make labor supply decisions “one day at a time” instead of intertemporally substituting labor and leisure across multiple days, and (ii) set a loose daily income target and quit working once they reach that target

Biased Judgments of Fairness in Bargaining

When court trials (or arbitration) are the mechanisms for resolving bargaining impasses, the costs and risks associated with third-party intervention should motivate settlement (Henry Farber and Harry Katz, 1979). However, empirical evidence suggests that impasses and inefficient settlements are common in the legal system and in contract negotiations. For example, one study of asbestos suits found that only 37 cents of every dollar spent by both sides end up in the plaintiffs' hands (James Kakalik et al., 1983)

Justice from an interdisciplinary perspective: the impact of the revolution in Human Sciences on Peace Research and International Relations

Peace and justice have been a preferred couple in theoretical writings - but what do we know about their empirical relationship? Insights from other disciplines suggest that humans are highly sensitive to violations of justice and that justice concerns permeate social relations. Neuroscientists have located the parts of the brain responsible for negative reactions to violation of claims for justice. Evolutionary biologists have identified rules of distribution and retribution not only in early human societies but among other socially living species as well. Psychologists have observed the emergence of a sense of justice in very early childhood, while behavioral economists have identified behavior of average persons in experiments that deviated significantly from the model of the "economic man" and could only be explained by a sense of justice. The chapter summarizes these findings and outlines their implications for peace research. It highlights the ambivalent nature of justice for social relations. Justice concerns can exacerbate conflicts between individuals and groups but justice can also provide standards for arriving at durable peaceful solutions to conflicts. Understanding these ambivalences and their repercussions for international and intrastate relations provides a promising path towards understanding conflict dynamics

Privacy Concerns and Information Disclosure: An Illusion of Control Hypothesis

In this paper, we run a series of experiments in order to investigate one possible cause of inconsistency in people’s behavior and concerns regarding online privacy. Even though individuals claim that privacy is very important, many end up revealing considerable private information in online social networks. It is possible that individuals suffer from illusion of control when dealing with the privacy of their data: when subjects are personally responsible for the publication of private information online, they may also tend to perceive some form of control over the access and use of that information by others. If, instead, a third party were responsible for the publication of the same data, they may feel a loss of control and realize that once private information is posted online not only can it be accessed, but also used by others without authorization: once it is available on the network, that information becomes indeed public