| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation explores issues on `` Optimal Listing Strategies in On-Line Auctions′′, ``Risk-Averse and Fee-Shifting Rules in Litigation′′, and ``Can Partial Fee-Shifting Reduce both Litigation and Its Cost?′′.
The first essay proposes a unified framework to characterize the seller′s optimal listing strategy as a function of the theirs rates of time-impatience. On-line auction provide potential sellers with a large opportunity to sell their products. Specifically, the fixed-price listing, the regular auction, and the buy-it-now auction are each a solution of the seller′s single optimization problem under different values of the relative rate of time-impatience: The perfectly patient seller adopts the regular auction when facing perfectly patient bidders; for the other cases, the sellers with medium range of time-impatience adopt the buy-it-now auctions; and the most impatient sellers adopt the fixed-price listing. Moreover, under mild conditions, the reverse price is inversely related to the value of the seller′s discount factor, either within or across formats. This in turn implies that the posted price in the fixed-price sale is greater than the reserve price of the buy-it-now auction, followed by that of the regular auction.
The second essay explores a little further into the analysis of the litigation under risk-aversion. Most of the literature discuss some uncertainty in litigation, base on the simplified model and the grounds for the assumption of risk-neutral that the risk-averse behavior is rarely discussed. Therefore, this essay builds a risk-aversion model to investigate fee-shifting rule. In this essay, we adopt rent-seeking model to analyze litigation costs. Because Tullock′s model of rent-seeking has given birth to a broader set of contexts, including civil litigation. We know that, in American rule, risk-averse plaintiff and defendant have smaller litigation costs than risk-neutrality plaintiff and defendant. In the second place, based on our observation on English rule, we have good grounds for thinking that risk-averse plaintiff and defendant have larger litigation costs (rent-seeking efforts) than risk-neutrality plaintiff and defendant. More precisely, we demonstrate that American rule under risk- aversion has smallest litigation cost, and English rule under risk-aversion has most great litigation cost.
The final essay relates to a considerable numbers of studies have been made on a fee-shifting rule in litigation problems. In this essay, we construct a rent-seeking model to analyze partial fee-shifting rule how affect parties′ decisions to litigate and litigation expenditures. Because the most important area of use of rent-seeking models in law probably the field of litigation.
Our results provide parties reduce more litigation rates in the English rule(the loser of a lawsuit must pay all the litigation costs of the winner), but pay less litigation cost in the American rule(parties only pay their own cost). Most importantly,the American rule and the English rule have more advantages over than partial fee-shifting rule, including the expected litigation expenditures. There is no significant effect in support of the partial fee-shifting rule reducing litigation rates and costs. | en_US |