Browsing by Author "Spier, Kathryn"

Now showing items 1-20 of 27

    • Bundling and Firm Reputation 

      Dana, James Dwight; Spier, Kathryn E. (John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business. Harvard Law School., 2009)
      By bundling experience goods, a manufacturer can more easily maintain a reputation for high quality over time. Formally, we extend Klein and Lefler's (1981) repeated moral hazard model of product quality to consider ...

    • Burdens of Proof in Civil Litigation: An Economic Perspective 

      Spier, Kathryn E. (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
      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 ...

    • Divide and Conquer 

      Posner, Eric A.; Spier, Kathryn E.; Vermeule, Cornelius Adrian (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2010)
      The maxim “divide and conquer” (divide et impera) is invoked frequently in law, history, and politics, but often in a loose or undertheorized way. We suggest that the maxim is a placeholder for a complex of ideas related ...

    • Do Tying, Bundling, and Other Purchase Restraints Increase Product Quality? 

      Spier, Kathryn E.; Dana, James Dwight (Elsevier, 2015)
      Tying, bundling, minimum purchase requirements, loyalty discounts, exclusive dealing, and other purchase restraints can create stronger incentives for firms to invest in product quality. In our first example, the firm sells ...

    • Entry Deterrence in a Duopoly Market 

      Dana, James Dwight; Spier, Kathryn E. (Berkeley Electronic Press, 2007)
      In a homogeneous good, Cournot duopoly model, entry may occur even when the potential entrant has no cost advantage and no independent access to distribution. By sinking its costs of production before negotiating with the ...

    • Exclusive Dealing and Market Foreclosure: Further Experimental Results 

      Landeo, Claudia M.; Spier, Kathryn E. (Mohr Siebeck, 2012)
      This paper reports further experimental results on exclusive dealing contracts. We extend Landeo and Spier's (2009) work by studying Naked Exclusion in a strategic environment that involves a four-player, two-stage game. ...

    • Exploiting Plaintiffs Through Settlement: Divide and Conquer 

      Che, Yeon-Koo; Spier, Kathryn E. (Mohr, 2008)
      This paper considers settlement negotiations between a single defendant and N plaintiffs when there are Fixed costs of litigation. When making simultaneous take-it-or-leave-it offers to the plaintiffs, the defendant adopts ...

    • Incentives and Contract Frames: Comment 

      Landeo, Claudia; Spier, Kathryn E. (Mohr, 2012)
      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 ...

    • Incentives to Invest in Litigation and the Superiority of the Class Action 

      Rosenberg, David; Spier, Kathryn E. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2014)
      We formally demonstrate the general case for class action in a rent-seeking contest model, explaining why separate action adjudication is biased in the defendant’s favor and collective adjudication is bias free. Separate ...

    • Incomplete Contracts and Signaling 

      Spier, Kathryn E. (RAND, 1992)
      This article Presents a principal-agent model in which asymmetric information leads to contractual incompleteness. I show that in the presence of transactions costs, incompleteness may act as a signal of the principal's ...

    • Irreconcilable Differences: Judicial Resolution of Business Deadlock 

      Landeo, Claudia M.; Spier, Kathryn E. (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
      This article studies the judicial resolution of business deadlock. Asset valuation, a necessary component of business divorce procedures, can pose serious problems in case of closely-held businesses such as general ...

    • Manufacturer Liability for Harms Caused by Consumers to Others 

      Hay, Bruce L.; Spier, Kathryn E. (American Economic Association, 2005)
      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 desirable. If ...

    • A Note on Joint and Several Liability: Insolvency, Settlement, and Incentives 

      Spier, Kathryn E. (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
      No abstract provided.

    • A Note on the Divergence between the Private and the Social Motive to Settle under a Negligence Rule 

      Spier, Kathryn E. (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
      The private motives to settle civil lawsuits are seldom aligned with the interests of society. This article presents a simple model of a negligence rule where there is too much settlement. During pretrial bargaining, the ...

    • On the Efficiency of Privately Stipulated Damages for Breach of Contract: Entry Barriers, Reliance, and Renegotiation 

      Spier, Kathryn E.; Whinston, Michael D. (RAND, 1995)
      Two roles for stipulated damage provisions have been debated in the literature: protecting relationship-specific investments and inefficiently excluding competitors. Aghion and Bolton (1987) formally demonstrate the latter ...

    • Pretrial Bargaining and the Design of Fee-Shifting Rules 

      Spier, Kathryn E. (RAND, 1994)
      Legal rules for allocating the private costs of civil litigation, or ''fee-shifting'' rules, provide powerful incentives for settlement. Within the context of a direct-revelation mechanism, the fee-shifting rule that ...

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

      Spier, Kathryn E. (Yale University Press, 2011)
      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 ...

    • Shotgun Mechanisms for Common-Value Partnerships: The Unassigned-Offeror Problem 

      Landeo, Claudia M.; Spier, Kathryn E. (Elsevier BV, 2013)
      Shotguns clauses are commonly included in the business agreements of partnerships and limited liability companies (LLCs), but the role of offeror typically remains unassigned. In a common-value, one-sided asymmetric ...

    • Shotguns and Deadlocks 

      Landeo, Charles M.; Spier, Kathryn E. (Harvard John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business, 2013)
      The process of resolving business deadlocks is time consuming and expensive, typically requiring the services of lawyers, financial experts and judges. Prolonged resolution processes, cost-inefficient administration of ...

    • Should Consumers be Permitted to Waive Products Liability? Product Safety, Private Contracts, and Adverse Selection 

      Choi, Albert; Spier, Kathryn E. (Yale University Press, 2014)
      A potentially dangerous product is supplied by a competitive market. The likelihood of a product-related accident depends on the unobservable precautions taken by the manufacturer and on the type of the consumer. Contracts ...