Category Archives: Law and Economics
Lai, Yu and Lam, ‘Michael Heller’s theory of the “tragedy of the anti-commons”: A Coasian property rights interpretation and some applications to planning policies’
ABSTRACT This short analytical paper discusses Heller’s (2013) concept of the ‘tragedy of the anti-commons’ (TOAC) and his car-parking fable; and translates his analysis, in its best possible light, into a Coasian property rights-access framework. Within this framework, the paper proceeds to denominate TOAC as a special case of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (TOC) […]
Haris Durrani, ‘Before Invention’
ABSTRACT This Article is the first comprehensive historical account of a foundational doctrine of US patent law: conception. Conception supplies the meaning of invention at the root of the patent system. It is a mental act, the formation of the idea of an invention before it is made. Considered ‘the touchstone of inventorship’, conception can […]
Baffi and Parisi, ‘The Double Edge of Freedom of Contract’
ABSTRACT Standard economic reasoning suggests that expanding an individual’s choice set cannot reduce welfare because additional options may always be ignored. This intuition underlies the traditional economic justification for freedom of contract. This paper shows that the monotonic relationship between choice and welfare may break down in bargaining environments characterized by asymmetric bilateral monopoly and […]
Bereskin, Hsu and Wang, ‘Growth of Firms under Injunction Risk’
ABSTRACT Although injunctions serve as a crucial remedy for intellectual property protection, their excessive use has the potential to limit economic growth. We use the 2006 Supreme Court ruling in eBay v MercExchange, which reduced injunction likelihood for defendants in cases related to information and communications technology patents, as a shock to injunction risk. These […]
Hylton and Kim, ‘The Economics of Appeals’
ABSTRACT This paper examines the incentive to appeal. While existing literature focuses on appeals as a mechanism for correcting errors or controlling judicial incentives, we explore individual litigants’ incentives in civil and criminal cases by modeling the opportunity cost of the trial court judgment for litigants when deciding whether to appeal. In civil trials, this […]
Friedman and Adler, ‘Moral Capitalism: A Biblical Perspective’
ABSTRACT We argue that laissez-faire capitalism in its current form is unsustainable, and that if it is to survive, we need to develop a new moral capitalism. An underexplored source on the subject that may provide insight into current difficulties is the Hebrew Bible. We explicate four basic principles of the Hebrew Bible and Talmud […]
Ella Corren, ‘Privacy Law’s Reality Check’
ABSTRACT The past decade has seen an unprecedented wave of regulatory activity aimed at governing the information economy, with privacy, antitrust, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the forefront. Yet despite a surge of lawmaking and enforcement – especially in the United States and the European Union – persistent concerns over the harms of digital markets […]
Ayouni, Friehe and Gabuthy, ‘Ignorance Is Bliss? Information Avoidance in Litigation’
ABSTRACT This paper examines defendants’ choice to learn about their fault level and its impact on litigation outcomes. Fault-level information is free of cost and has a positive instrumental value for defendants. However, identity concerns can induce defendants to avoid the information. Information avoidance favors settlement relative to trial. Conversely, reputation concerns tend to increase […]
Lynn LoPucki, ‘Against Limited Liability’
ABSTRACT Limited liability is an entity characteristic that excuses the entity’s investors from liability for damages caused by the entity’s wrongful acts. Although prominent scholars have referred to limited liability as ‘one of mankind’s greatest ideas’, limited tort liability is a costly economic mistake. Limited liability channels investment away from projects that increase social wealth […]
Gregory Dickinson, ‘The Vanishing Economics of Trade Secret Value’
ABSTRACT Trade secret law is built around a simple economic fact. Information can yield supracompetitive returns only when prospective competitors are prevented from using it – as when it is kept secret from them. A successful trade secret plaintiff must therefore show that the alleged trade secret derives ‘independent economic value’ from not being generally […]