Incentives to Settle Under Joint and Several Liability: An Empirical Analysis of Superfund Litigation
研究了超级基金法中连带责任是否阻碍和解，通过扩展理论模型并用诉讼数据实证发现，连带责任不会减少和解，甚至可能促进和解，对政策制定有参考价值。
Congress may soon restrict joint and several liability for cleanup of contaminated sites under Superfund. We explore whether this change would discourage settlements and is therefore likely to increase the program's already high litigation costs per site. Recent theoretical research by Kornhauser and Revesz finds that joint and several liability may either encourage or discourage settlement, depending on the correlation of outcomes at trial across defendants. We extend their two‐defendant model to a richer framework with N defendants. This extension allows us to test the theoretical model empirically using data on Superfund litigation. We find that joint and several liability does not discourage settlements and may even encourage them. Our results support the model's predictions about the effects of several variables, such as the degree of correlation in trial outcomes.