Lengths and volumes in Riemannian manifolds

We consider the question of when an inequality between lengths of corresponding geodesics implies a corresponding inequality between volumes. We prove this in a number of cases for compact manifolds with and without boundary. In particular, we show that for two Riemannian metrics of negative curvature on a compact surface without boundary, an inequality between the marked length spectra implies the same inequality between the areas, with equality implying isometry.