Chilling, Settlement, and the Accuracy of the Legal Process
In this article, we ask the basic question: Is it necessarily the case that allowing or promoting settlement of lawsuits enhances social welfare? Our answer is not necessarily; there are circumstances where actually prohibiting settlement generates more social welfare than allowing it. Settlement can lower social welfare because it reduces the accuracy of legal outcomes. Reducing this accuracy reduces the ability of the law to deter harmful activity without chilling legitimate activity that might be mistaken for harmful activity. In some circumstances, the welfare loss from the chilling of legitimate activity can outweigh the gains from litigation cost savings, even if there are no restrictions on the damage rule. (JEL K00, K41, D82, C78) The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 26 (2010)
Issue (Month): 1 (April)
Pages: 144-157
| Handle: | RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:26:y:2010:i:1:p:144-157 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK Fax: 01865 267 985 Web page: http://jleo.oupjournals.org/ Email:
|
| Order Information: | Web: http://www.oup.co.uk/journals |
No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:26:y:2010:i:1:p:144-157. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Oxford University Press)
or (Christopher F. Baum)If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.