Lawyers as Agents of the Devil in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game: Evidence from Long Run Play

Orley Ashenfelter, David Bloom and Gordon Dahl

No 7245, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Do the parties in a typical dispute face incentives similar to those in the classic prisoner's dilemma game? In this paper, we explore whether the costs and benefits of legal representation are such that each party seeks legal representation in the hope of exploiting the other party, while knowing full well that failing to do so will open up the possibility of being exploited. The paper first shows how it is possible to test for the presence of such an incentive structure in a typical dispute resolution system. It then reports estimates of the incentives for the parties to obtain legal representation in wage disputes that were settled by final-offer arbitration in New Jersey. The paper also reports briefly on similar studies of data from discharge grievances, court-annexed disputes in Pittsburgh, and child custody disputes in California. In each case, the data provide evidence that the parties face strong individual incentives to obtain legal representation which makes the parties jointly worse off. Using our New Jersey data, we find that expert agents may well have played a productive role in moderating the biases of their clients, but only early on in the history of the system. Over time, the parties slowly evolved to a non-cooperative equilibrium where the use of lawyers becomes nearly universal, despite the fact that agreeing not to hire lawyers is cheaper and does not appear to alter arbitration outcomes.

Keywords: arbitration; prisoner's dilemma; lawyers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J52 K0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2013-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-law
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published in: Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 2013, 10 (3), 399-423

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7245.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Lawyers as Agents of the Devil in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game: Evidence from Long Run Play (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7245

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().