Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
诉讼中的恶意
Spite in litigation
摘要
This paper studies how litigation and settlement behaviour is affected by agents motivated by spiteful preferences under the American fee‐shifting rule compared to the English one. We conduct an experiment and find that litigation expenditures are overall higher under the English rule compared to the American rule—even for low‐merit cases—while there is no difference for settlement requests. Spiteful participants exhibit overall higher expenditures and settlement requests, with a more pronounced increase in litigation expenditures under the American fee‐shifting rule and a similar increase in settlement requests under both rules. Being spiteful comes at a cost. The expected payoff is lower for more spiteful litigants—especially under the American rule—independent of facing a less or more spiteful opponent. Additionally, being matched with a more spiteful litigant reduces the expected payoff similarly under both rules. We conclude that the English rule can protect spiteful players from themselves but cannot reduce the harm they inflict upon others—at the cost of inducing higher litigation expenditures for less spiteful players compared to the American rule.
中文摘要
本文研究了在美式费用转移规则与英式费用转移规则下，受恶意偏好驱动的代理人的诉讼与和解行为如何受到影响。我们开展了一项实验，发现相较于美式规则，英式规则下诉讼支出总体上更高——即使对于低胜诉可能性的案件也是如此——而在和解请求方面则没有差异。恶意参与者总体上表现出更高的支出与和解请求，其中在美式费用转移规则下诉讼支出的增加更为显著，而在两种规则下和解请求的增加幅度相似。怀有恶意是有代价的。对于恶意程度更高的诉讼当事人而言，预期收益更低——尤其是在美式规则下——无论其面对的是恶意程度更低还是更高的对手。此外，与恶意程度更高的诉讼当事人配对，在两种规则下都会以相似方式降低预期收益。我们得出结论：英式规则能够保护恶意参与者使其免受自身之害，但无法减少他们对他人造成的伤害——其代价是相较于美式规则，会为恶意程度较低的参与者引致更高的诉讼支出。