Manufacturer Liability for Harms Caused by Consumers to Others

Should the manufacturer of a product be held legally responsible when a consumer, while using the product, harms someone else? We show that if consumers have deep pockets then manufacturer liability is not economically efficient. It is more efficient for the consumers themselves to bear responsibility for the harms that they cause. If homogeneous consumers have limited assets, then the most efficient rule is "residual-manufacturer liability" where the manufacturer pays the shortfall in damages not paid by the consumer. Residual-manufacturer liability distorts the market quantity when consumers' willingness to pay is correlated with their propensity to cause harm. It distorts product safety when consumers differ in their wealth levels. In both cases, consumer-only liability may be more efficient.

Naked Exclusion: An Experimental Study of Contracts with Externalities

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to assess the ability of an incumbent seller to profitably foreclose a market with exclusive contracts. We use the strategic environment described by Rasmusen, Ramseyer, and Wiley (1991) and Segal and Whinston (2000) where entry is unprofitable when sufficiently many downstream buyers sign exclusive contracts with the incumbent. When discrimination is impossible, the game resembles a stag-hunt (coordination) game in which the buyers' payoffs are endogenously chosen by the incumbent seller. Exclusion occurs when the buyers fail to coordinate on their preferred equilibrium. Two-way non-binding pre-play communication among the buyers lowers the power of exclusive contracts and induces more generous contract terms from the seller. When discrimination and communication are possible, the exclusion rate rises. Divide-and-conquer strategies are observed more frequently when buyers can communicate with each other. Exclusion rates are significantly higher when the buyers' payoffs are endogenously chosen rather than exogenously given. Finally, secret offers are shown to decrease the incumbent's power to profitably exclude.Bargaining with Externalities; Contracting with Externalities; Experiments; Exclusive Dealing; Antitrust; Discrimination; Endogenous Payoffs; Communication; Coordination Games; Equilibrium Selection

Product Safety, Buybacks and the Post-Sale Duty to Warn

A manufacturer learns a product's risks after it has been sold and distributed to consumers. When held strictly liable for product-related injuries, the manufacturer offers to repurchase the product when the risk exceeds a threshold. Consumers accept the offer when their private valuations of consumption are smaller than the buyback price. The manufacturer's private incentives to stage a buyback are insufficient, the buyback price offered is too low, and the continued product usage by consumers is excessive. The ability of the manufacturer to repurchase the product ex post reduces the incentive to design safer products ex ante. A negligence rule, the “post-sale duty to warn,” implements the social welfare benchmark

Burdens of Proof in Civil Litigation: An Economic Perspective

Burden of proof rules, which require a specified party to produce evidence on a contested issue, are central to the adversary system. In this article, we model burden of proof rules as a device for minimizing the costs of litigation. The central point to emerge from the model is that, properly assigned, a burden of proof rule economizes on the transmission of information to the court. We use the model to explain characteristic practices of courts in assigning the burden of proof

The Use of Most-Favored-Nation Clauses in Settlement of Litigation

Many settlement contracts in litigation involving multiple plaintiffs (or multiple defendants) in- clude “most-favored-nation” (MFN) clauses. If an early settlement includes an MFN and the defendant settles later with another plaintiff for more money, the early settlers receive these terms too. If the defendant knows the aggregate distribution of expected awards but cannot discriminate among the privately informed plaintiffs, then MFNs avoid costly delay. Plaintiffs with weak cases settle early rather than on the courthouse steps. The effects of MFNs on the settlement terms, plaintiffs’ welfare, litigation rates, and the defendant’s ex ante incentives are considered and alternative explanations are explored

The Use of \u27Most-Favored-Nation\u27 Clauses in Settlement of Litigation

Many settlement agreements in lawsuits involving either multiple plaintiffs or multiple defendants include so-called most-favored-nation clauses. If a defendant facing multiple claims, for example, settles with some plaintiffs early and settles with additional plaintiffs later for a greater amount, then the early settlers will receive the more favorable terms as well. These MFN provisions have been prominent in the recent MP3.com case, as well as tobacco litigation, class actions, and many antitrust lawsuits. This paper considers a defendant who is facing a large group of heterogeneous plaintiffs. Each plaintiff has private information about the (expected) award that he or she will receive should the case go to trial. MFN clauses are valuable because they commit the defendant not to raise his offer over time. This has two important effects. First, holding overall settlement rate fixed, MFNs encourage earlier settlement. Second, depending upon the distribution of plaintiff types, MFNs can either increase or decrease the overall settlement rate. Social welfare implications are discussed, and alternative theories, including the strategic use of MFNs to extract value from future plaintiffs, are explored

The Stability of Eccentrically Stiffened Circular Cylinders. Volume 3 - Appendix

Critical stress curves of compressive buckling for longitudinally stiffened cylinder

Threats Without Binding Commitment

This paper explores the power of threats in the absence of binding commitment. The threatener cannot commit to carry out the threat if the victim refuses payment, and cannot commit not to carry out the threat if payment is made. An important assumption of the model is that once the threat is carried out it cannot be repeated. If exercising the threat is costly to the threatener, then the threat cannot succeed in extracting money from the victim. If exercising the threat would benefit the threatener, however, then the threat’s success depends upon whether the threat may be repeated after a payment is made. In the equilibrium of a finite-period game, the threat is carried out and the victim makes no payments. In an infinite-horizon game, however, it is an equilibrium for the victim to make a stream of payments over time. The expectation of future payments keeps the threatener from exercising the threat

Incentives and Contract Frames: Comment

Principal-agent problems are pervasive in economic settings. CEOs and shareholders, lawyers and clients, manufacturers and retailers, lenders and borrowers are all examples of settings in which moral hazard problems might arise. Incentive contracts in both individual and team environments have been studied by economists (see Shavell, 1979, and Holmstrom, 1982, 1979, for seminal theoretical work; and, Prendergast, 1999, for a survey of empirical literature). Contracts that tie an agent's compensation to performance, such as conditional bonus schemes, have been proposed as a way to align the interests of agents and principals. Experimental literature from economics and social psychology suggests that the way choices are framed can affect decisions as well. Hence, contract frames might influence the effectiveness of incentive schemes. This comment first outlines seminal experimental studies on frames and describes recent work that relates the incentive contract literature with the experimental work on frames. Second, it discusses the experimental design and findings of Brooks, Stremitzer, and Tontrup's (2011) work on individual incentives and contract frames