Category Archives: Law and Economics
Martino and Ringe, ‘The Social Cost of Blockchain’
ABSTRACT In the past decade, the legal and economic literature on blockchain technology and its applications has flourished. This new technology holds great promise for enhancing the efficiency of contracting. Building on the classic Coase theorem, blockchain as a decentralised mechanism of decision-making should be superior to centralised regulation, possibly yielding substantial efficiency gains. Notably, […]
Vatiero and Schaefer, ‘Posner’s Economic Analysis of Law at Fifty and the Globalization of Jurisprudence’
ABSTRACT Richard Posner is undoubtedly one of the most influential legal scholars of the 20th century, one of the most prolific judges, and one of the most prominent public intellectuals. This special issue, compiling seventeen contributions by leading scholars from a range of countries, is on the occasion of 50th anniversary of the first publication […]
Carsten Koenig, ‘An Economic Analysis of Supply Chain Liability’
ABSTRACT Legislators and regulators around the globe are increasingly seeking to hold multinational companies accountable for human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, even when the harm is primarily caused by a subsidiary or business partner. This paper examines such supply chain liability from an economic perspective. It argues that it can be […]
Rosenthal and Burkett, ‘Data-Driven Contract Design’
ABSTRACT This paper proposes a prior-free model of incentive contracting wherein the principal’s beliefs about the agent’s production technology are characterized by revealed preference data. The principal and the agent are each financially risk neutral and the agent’s preferences are understood to be quasilinear in effort. Prior to contracting with the agent, the principal observes […]
Satish Kumar Jain, ‘On the Efficiency of Liability Rules When Both Victims and Injurers Suffer Losses’
ABSTRACT In the context of the standard tort model of interaction between two parties, where it is assumed that in case of accident only one party suffers losses, efficient liability rules are characterized by the condition of negligence liability. The condition of negligence liability requires that whenever one party is negligent and the other nonnegligent, […]
Baharad, Benjamin and Guttel, ‘Anti-Patents’
ABSTRACT Conventional wisdom has long perceived the patent and tort systems as separate legal entities, each tasked with a starkly different mission. Patent law rewards novel ideas; tort law deters harmful conduct. Against this backdrop, this Essay uncovers the opposing effects of patent and tort law on innovation, introducing the ‘injurer-innovator problem’. Patent law incentivizes […]
Levmore and Verstein, ‘Sharing where Bargains are Impossible’
ABSTRACT Cooperation sometimes breaks down, and former teammates will disagree about what happens next. For example, when can an employee quit to join a competitor? Courts often resolve disputes by looking at the parties actual or hypothetical bargain. Thus, a court may ask whether there was a non-competition agreement (and whether it was reasonable), or […]
Evan Piermont, ‘Vague Preferences and Contracts’
ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine decision making in an environment where payoff relevant contingencies are vague, that is neither absolutely true nor absolutely false. In this model, an agent values acts that are predicated on linguistic statements, rather than an exogenous state-space. I axiomatize a class of preferences under which agent’s beliefs about the […]
Gerver, Banerjee, John and John, ‘Nudging Against Consent is Effective but Lowers Welfare’
ABSTRACT Behavioural nudges are often criticised to ‘work in the dark’. However, recent experimental evidence suggests that the effectiveness of nudges is not reduced when they are delivered transparently. Most people endorse transparent nudges. Yet, transparent nudging may undermine human autonomy – a minority may oppose to being nudged and feel manipulated, even if they […]
Barry and Sokol, ‘Data Valuation and Law’
ABSTRACT Data has become an increasingly valuable asset. Numerous areas of law – including contracts, corporate law, IP, antitrust, tax, privacy, and bankruptcy – require parties and courts to determine the value of assets, including data. Unfortunately, data valuation has been hindered by a lack of clarity over what data is and why it is […]