IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/v37y2008i1p315-338.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Conflicting Moral and Legal Rules on Bargaining Behavior: The Case of No-Fault Divorce

Author

Listed:
  • Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
  • Jonathan Baron

Abstract

We hypothesize that the no-fault divorce law is in conflict with moral intuitions favoring punishment for people who break the marriage contract and that people will be either unwilling or unable to fully ignore marital fault in the context of divorce settlement negotiations. In four Web-based experiments, we asked subjects to read vignettes about divorcing couples and then to rate proposals by each party about how to divide the marital property. Under instructions to ignore fault, subjects nonetheless rated wrongdoers' proposals lower than victims' proposals. Some subjects ignored fault purposely, while others were unaware of their own bias. We also find evidence of self-serving bias; subjects taking the perspective of a victim showed more fault-based bias than did subjects taking the perspective of a wrongdoer. We conclude that under certain conditions of unilateral fault, the no-fault divorce law may actually increase the likelihood of impasse in divorce negotiations. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Suggested Citation

  • Tess Wilkinson-Ryan & Jonathan Baron, 2008. "The Effect of Conflicting Moral and Legal Rules on Bargaining Behavior: The Case of No-Fault Divorce," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 315-338, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:37:y:2008:i:1:p:315-338
    DOI: 10.1086/588265
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/588265
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/588265?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein, 1997. "Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 109-126, Winter.
    2. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    3. Baron, Jonathan & Ritov, Ilana, 1993. "Intuitions about Penalties and Compensation in the Context of Tort Law," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 17-33, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joni Hersch & Jennifer Bennett Shinall, 2020. "When equitable is not equal: experimental evidence on the division of marital assets in divorce," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 655-682, September.
    2. Chiara Berneri & Shaun Larcom & Congmin Peng & Po-Wen She, 2024. "The impact of law on moral and social norms: evidence from facemask fines in the UK," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 311-346, June.
    3. Andrea Gallice, 2012. "Strategic Announcements of Reference Points in Disputes and Litigations," Working papers 003, Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.
    4. Kłusek, Michał, 2024. "How acceptable is optimal deterrence?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Konow, James, 2001. "Fair and square: the four sides of distributive justice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 137-164, October.
    2. Osório, António, 2017. "Self-interest and equity concerns: A behavioural allocation rule for operational problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 261(1), pages 205-213.
    3. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    4. James Konow, 2000. "Fair Shares: Accountability and Cognitive Dissonance in Allocation Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1072-1091, September.
    5. Cherry, Todd L. & Shogren, Jason F., 2008. "Self-interest, sympathy and the origin of endowments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 69-72, October.
    6. Osório, António (António Miguel), 2017. "Self-interest and Equity Concerns: A Behavioural Allocation Rule for Operational Problems," Working Papers 2072/290757, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    7. Eichenberger, Reiner & Oberholzer-Gee, Felix, 1998. "Rational Moralists: The Role of Fairness in Democratic Economic Politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(1-2), pages 191-210, January.
    8. Giménez Gómez, José M. (José Manuel) & Osório, António (António Miguel), 2014. "A Theory of Representative Behavior in the Dictator Game," Working Papers 2072/237595, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    9. Simon G�chter & Arno Riedl, "undated". "Moral Property Rights in Bargaining," IEW - Working Papers 113, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    10. Maxime Menuet & Petros G. Sekeris, 2021. "Overconfidence and conflict," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(4), pages 1483-1499, October.
    11. Michael Seiler, 2014. "The Effect of Perceived Lender Characteristics and Market Conditions on Strategic Mortgage Defaults," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 256-270, February.
    12. Burks, Stephen V. & Carpenter, Jeffrey P. & Verhoogen, Eric, 2003. "Playing both roles in the trust game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 195-216, June.
    13. David Rea & Craig Froehle & Suzanne Masterson & Brian Stettler & Gregory Fermann & Arthur Pancioli, 2021. "Unequal but Fair: Incorporating Distributive Justice in Operational Allocation Models," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(7), pages 2304-2320, July.
    14. Seema Kacker & Tin Aung & Dominic Montagu & David Bishai, 2021. "Providers preferences towards greater patient health benefit is associated with higher quality of care," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 271-294, September.
    15. Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    16. Bradley J. Ruffle, 2005. "Buyer Countervailing Power: A Survey of Experimental Evidence," Working Papers 0512, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    17. Daniel Agness & Travis Baseler & Sylvain Chassang & Pascaline Dupas & Erik Snowberg, 2022. "Valuing the Time of the Self-Employed," CESifo Working Paper Series 9567, CESifo.
    18. Lackner, Mario & Sonnabend, Hendrik, 2021. "Coping with advantageous inequity—Field evidence from professional penalty kicking," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    19. Antonides, Gerrit & Kroft, Maaike, 2005. "Fairness judgments in household decision making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 902-913, December.
    20. Huang, Jen-Hung & Chang, Ching-Te & Chen, Cathy Yi-Hsuan, 2005. "Perceived fairness of pricing on the Internet," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 343-361, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:37:y:2008:i:1:p:315-338. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.