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Equilibrium and regulation of justice market: delays versus prices Matching supply with demand in justice is made possible via the variations in delays between the moment the case enters into the phase of deliberation and the moment of the judgment. The question is to know whether this rationing by waiting periods is efficient. The answer is no because the increase in waiting lists shows that the parties must wait increasingly longer to obtain a verdict from the courts. Identifying the different factors determining the demand for justice enables us to envisage other ways of controlling the flow of litigation which may decrease the time necessary to obtain a judgment. This consists in acting upon the time period allocated to the exchange of documents and to the open debate so as to reduce the length of the trial. However, there is the risk that this reduction in the duration of proceedings may well increase the demand for justice, so that the deliberating period will lengthen whilst the supply of justice remains fixed. The second idea consists in increasing the supply of justice. The failure of policies aimed at controlling through time and the presence of costs in the demand for justice will lead us to explore methods of control via proceedings costs. Two possibilities can be imag­ined: increasing the cost of access to justice and a redistribution of trial costs between the parties. In both cases, the aim is to encourage the parties to prefer a settlement rather than a judgment.

The litigation of a dispute follows a definite and well-worn path. If Victim wants to recover damages from Injurer, the lawsuit begins when Victim files a complaint. Injurer is required to file an answer. Next the parties engage in discovery. At any point during the process, the parties may settle the dispute on any terms they find mutually acceptable. The purpose of this paper is twofold: we provide an appraisal of the two-person dynamic games of incomplete information which have been used to model litigation; we compare, through a case-study, the american system (all litigants pay their own court costs) and the trench rule (the losing party is liable for the winner's legal fees, up to a reasonable limit) for allocating court costs.

Money and market: a critical view on search models Search models devoted to money theory greatly help in solving some unsettled problems mainly because they deal explicitly with the organisation of transactions and with the way individual agents meet and bargain. The purpose of this paper is to try to assess their importance for the general theory of market economies. Search-theoretic approach to money opens new perspectives but at the same time makes emerge old problems. In particular it seems now impossible not to wonder whether the choice of a collective organisation of exchange is or not a problem analogue to that of a technique of production or that of a bundle of consumption. Does it make sense to try to determine endogenously at the same time the choice of the rules of the game and the best way of playing them? A critical examination of basic search models may come to conclude that their main benefit is to reveal the dead ends of standard equilibrium theory rather than to save it from its traditional flaws in money theory.

The williamson's theory of vertical integration is not empirically verified This paper seeks to emphasize that Williamson's explanation of vertical integration is absolutely not empirically validated, even though it has been endorsed as such by numerous economists. In this framework, we first analyse the eight case studies that Williamson himself puts forward to support his model. Then, we scrutinize further empirical works, in particular the more recent ones. The originality of our works lies not so much in its overall conclusion which merely confirms the negative evaluation already expressed by H. Simon and R. Coase, but in the strengthening of their position as to the validity of Williamson's theory.