Valuing Easements: Some Experimental Evidence

Trefzger and Munneke (1998) present a theoretical model, where the surplus that an easement gives rise to will be split equally between the parties. We provide experimental evidence from Sweden indicating that the split of the surplus depends on the context and what is judged to be reasonable principles of a fair distribution. The dominant estates got a significantly higher share of the surplus because they could start the bargaining with a bid that only included compensation for cost, whereas the servient estate could not find any principle that would give them the whole surplus. After these initial asymmetric bids, the parties usually met halfway.