archive of the former site EconWPA.wustl.edu

Please do not link or reference this page. Use one of the following URLs:
ideas.repec.org as http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpga/9403008.html
econpapers.repec.org as http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wpawuwpga/9403008.htm

Keeping Society in the Dark: On the Admissibility of Pretrial Negotiations As Evidence in Court

Paper:ewp-game/9403008
From:    
Date: 31 Mar 94 08:52 CST

Title: Keeping Society in the Dark: On the Admissibility of Pretrial Negotiations As Evidence in Court
Author: Andrew F. Daughety and Jennifer F. Reinganum
Contact: Institution: Economics; Univ. of Iowa; Iowa City, Iowa 52242; USA
EWP-references: none
Report-no: Working paper 94-06 of Economics Series at UI
Comments: Zipped using PKZIP v2.04, encoded using UUENCODE v5.15. Zipped file includes 1 file -- Admissbl.fnl (body in WP5.1, 40 pages)

Abstract:

ABSTRACT We model the settlement and litigation process, allowing for incomplete information about the level of damages (incurred by the plaintiff) on the part of both the defendant and the court, and use the model to examine the effect of making (currently inadmissible) settlement demands admissible as evidence in court should a case proceed to trial. Two conclusions emerge. First, admissibility rules have efficiency consequences: making a pretrial demand admissible would increase the expected number of cases that go to trial. Second, such rules have distributional consequences and need not benefit all parties to a controversy. As an example, in product liability cases consumers are likely to favor inadmissibility, while corporations will favor the reverse.

Postscript files:(viewing .ps) archive: 9403008.ps or 9403008.ps.gz is 796025 bytes, 8-23-97.
Acrobat pdf files:(viewing .pdf) archive: 9403008.pdf is 131743 bytes, 2-6-95, or 9403008.pdf.gz
Access statistics for this paper at LogEc which is a part of the RePEc project as was/is EconWPA.
Translate to another language with babel.altavista.com EconWPA reference ewp-game/9403008
RePEc reference RePEc:wpa:wuwpga:9403008 send e-mail to

EconWPA began as a conversation between Bob Parks and Larry Blume on January 28, 1993. I located Paul Ginsparg's archive (then xxx.lanl.gov) and he graciously installed his software on a Sun Sparc system which was supporting the department of economics email and computation. EconWPA began accepting papers July 1, 1993 and had ftp, email, gopher and web interfaces. The web interface for submissions was engineered into existence in July 1995. A complete and catastrophic machine failure in 1999 caused the loss of EconWPA's email new paper announcment service at which time there were over 15,000 subscriptions with over 8,000 unique email addresses.

In 2005, Arts and Sciences commandeered the computing services that I had provided to the Department of Economics since 1987. Some might say that the department was sold out, others would (erroneously) claim that centralization is efficient, and still others would claim that I have few marketing skills.

I was told that I could keep operating EconWPA (as well as many other services including rfe.wustl.edu, barnett.wustl.edu, and three RePEc servers) but I would receive no support (hardware, software, or anthing else) and (as had been the case) no compensation. At that point, given the apparent low valuation of my activities by the department, and university, it made no sense for me to continue operating EconWPA or other services.

Thanks to all who have supported EconWPA in the past.

A Chinese curse states May you live in intersting times. I have. Bob Parks - Jan 2006