Category Archives: Law and Economics
Shai Agmon, ‘The Moral Limits of What, Exactly?’
ABSTRACT While moral arguments for limiting market expansionism proliferate, a fundamental question has been left unanswered: the moral limits of what, exactly? Moral Limits of Markets (MLM) theorists tend to employ different terms – markets, putting a price tag, buying and selling – interchangeably and inconsistently to describe the phenomenon they are troubled by. I […]
Cortelyou Kenney, ‘The New Game Theory’
ABSTRACT Game theory and the legal system it models are deeply indebted to the idea of efficiency and efficient outcomes. A great many scholars use game theory to rationalize approaches used on efficiency not only to commercial transactions, but also the legal system writ large, including the tort law system and the criminal justice system. […]
Viktor Vanberg, ‘Spontaneous Order, Evolution and Common Law: Some Notes on FA Hayek’s System of Social Thought’
The ‘twin ideas’, as Hayek (1967a: 77; 1973: 23) calls them, of spontaneous social order and cultural evolution (Vanberg [1986] 1994) are at the core of his social thought, and they are closely connected with a theme that runs through his entire work: namely, the knowledge problem (Vanberg 2017). A spontaneous social order, paradigmatically exemplified […]
George Vojta, ‘Unanchoring’
ABSTRACT This Article introduces a novel litigation strategy plaintiffs’ attorneys use that inverts conventional practices: Unanchoring. Unanchoring takes two forms: (1) economic unanchoring, which suppresses the submission of economic damages to juries, and (2) plaintiff unanchoring, which shifts juries’ attention away from a defendant’s damage to the plaintiff and toward the defendant’s danger to society—and […]
Tabbach and Cohen, ‘The Irrelevance of Legal Uncertainty’
ABSTRACT Conventional wisdom asserts that legal uncertainty in the determination of liability distorts the incentives of injurers to take care. Mild (severe) legal uncertainty induces injurers to over-comply (under-comply) with the standard of care, leading to inefficiency. We show that these results hinge on the assumption that legal uncertainty is exogenously set. When legal uncertainty […]
Adam Davidson, ‘Guido Calabresi’s “Other Justice Reasons”’
ABSTRACT This essay argues that building community may be one of the ‘other justice reasons’ identified by Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed in their seminal article, ‘Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral’. Using Judge Calabresi’s like and transformative justice as examples, it suggests that as an ‘other justice reason’, building […]
Constantinos Challoumis, ‘The Significance of Law in Economics’
ABSTRACT The vital significance of law in economics is essential for understanding the intricate relationship between these two fundamental disciplines. Law plays a pivotal role in shaping and regulating economic activities, ensuring fairness, stability, and efficiency within a society. By establishing legal frameworks, property rights, and contractual obligations, the law provides the necessary structure for […]
Emons and Parisi, ‘The Economics of Litigation Financing’
ABSTRACT Third-party litigation financing involves an external party funding a legal claim, taking on the risk of loss in exchange for a share of any potential recovery. As European regulators prepare to establish a common regulatory framework for third-party litigation financing, this article draws on existing law and economics literature to examine the unique characteristics […]
Adam Slavny, ‘Varieties of Consequentialism and Deontology in Theories of Tort Law’
ABSTRACT An important contribution of Gregory Keating’s Reasonableness and Risk is to mount objections to law and economics whilst articulating an alternative deontological vision of tort law to that offered by corrective justice theorists. In this paper I offer two reservations about Keating’s account. One is that some forms of consequentialism can accommodate at least […]
Tun-Jen Chiang, ‘The Economic Structure of Trade Secret Law’
ABSTRACT The standard economic account of trade secret law focuses on providing incentives for creating new inventions. The incentive-to-invent theory, however, provides little explanation for why the key doctrinal features of trade secret law are structured the way that they are. For example, providing ex ante incentives to invent does not easily explain the requirement […]