Category Archives: Law and Economics
Kristelia García, ‘Selective Enforcement’
ABSTRACT Private rights holders frequently engage in selective enforcement-that is, they elect to enforce against some wrongdoers, and not to enforce against others, under different, or even under similar, circumstances. The conventional wisdom assumes that when we observe enforcement, there has been an economic loss, whereas when we observe nonenforcement, there either hasn’t been an […]
Bar-Gill and Hayashi, ‘Present Bias and Debt-Financed Durable Goods’
ABSTRACT It has become common to view credit as problematic for present-biased consumers, who are tempted to incur too much debt because of its deferred costs. But while this view is generally valid when debt is used to finance current consumption, the picture becomes much more nuanced when credit is used to fund the purchase […]
Andrew Woodhouse, ‘Commodity-form theory of law, the climate crisis, and the European Union’
ABSTRACT This essay reflects on how the Marxist commodity-form theory of law can inform approaches to EU climate law. The commodity-form theory understands law as a central social relation in the capitalist mode of production. The essay combines this theory with a Marxist analysis of the relationship between capitalism and nature, arguing that the inherent […]
Halonen-Akatwijuka and Pafilis, ‘Who Should Own the Past?’
ABSTRACT We analyze ownership and location of cultural goods, modelled as public goods. We show that cross spillovers can give a rationale for removing one part of the cultural good to lower valuation host country under their ownership. We examine when restitution is optimal and what form it should take, ie whether restitution should be […]
Sergio Mittlaender, ‘Conflict and Property Law: The Hidden Costs of Takings and of Liability Rule Protection’
ABSTRACT This paper presents a novel argument for the law’s preference for property over liability rules that is based on their potential to reduce socially costly forms of retaliation by victims of takings. Property rules can better mitigate conflict and discourage costly punishment by victims, thereby increasing social welfare. This hypothesis is tested empirically in […]
Steven Miskinis, ‘The Return of the Excluded’
ABSTRACT A basic tenet of property theory is the superior efficiency of private property over forms of common ownership. The commons are, as Garrett Hardin famously said, subject to a tragedy of overuse and waste by co-users precisely because no one can stop the use and overuse by others. Private property triggers a right to […]
Parisi, Bigoni, Bortolotti and Zhang, ‘Do Contract Remedies Affect Efficient Renegotiation? An Experiment’
ABSTRACT Rational parties enter into a contract if the agreement is mutually beneficial. However, after the contract is formed, changes to the costs and/or benefits of performance may render the original contract undesirable. In this paper, we carry out an incentivized experiment to study the effect of alternative remedies on the parties’ ability to renegotiate […]
Steven Shavell, ‘Continuances and Uncertainty in the Course of Adjudication’
ABSTRACT The myriad uncertainties common to the process of adjudication – concerning evidence that opposing parties will present, legal issues that will become relevant, illness of witnesses, and the like – lead to two social problems. First, when unanticipated events occur, the information that parties will be able to provide to courts may be inadequate. […]
Guillaume Vuillemey, ‘The Origins of Limited Liability: Catering to Safety Demand with Investors’ Irresponsibility’
ABSTRACT Limited liability is a key feature of corporate law. Using data on asset prices and capital flows in mid-19th century England, I argue that its liberalization was not decided to relax firms’ financing constraints, but to satisfy investors’ demand for ‘safe’ stores of value. Limited liability eliminated adverse selection about the quality of other […]
Guanghua Yu, ‘The Idea of Private Law: A Communitarian version of Kantian Rights’
ABSTRACT This Article begins with the introduction of two competing schools in private law. One school claims that private law is to achieve efficient resource allocation or wealth maximization. The other school follows the bipolar structure of corrective justice with the assistance of the Kantian theory. While each side is very strong and elegant, neither […]