Category Archives: Law and Economics
‘Planning for Bargaining Power’
Albert H Choi and George G Triantis, ‘Designing Contract Modification’, University of Chicago Law Review (forthcoming), available at SSRN (2 February 2025). This article by Professors Choi and Triantis hits close to home with how closely it models my personal experiences with oil and gas leases on my family’s farm during the leasing boom of […]
Danisz Okulicz, ‘Should Lawyers Lie to Their Clients? Biased Expertise in Negotiations’
ABSTRACT I propose a theoretical model to analyze the effects of cheap-talk legal advice on pretrial negotiations with asymmetric information when a conflict of interest between plaintiffs and attorneys is possible. An informed defendant makes a settlement offer to an uninformed plaintiff who may consult her attorney before taking the decision. Hiring an attorney biased […]
Edward Iacobucci, ‘Trebilcock and trade-offs’
ABSTRACT Through discussion of a sample of his work, this article identifies a key theme in Michael Trebilcock’s astonishingly deep and broad body of scholarship: trade-offs matter. Trebilcock’s analysis of a House of Lords case, Macaulay v Schroeder Publishing, demonstrates the perils of one-sided economic analysis: the court ignored trade-offs in determining that a contract […]
Anthony Marino, ‘Ideological Bias and Breach of the Fiduciary Duty of Care’
ABSTRACT This paper analyzes a remedy for breach of the fiduciary duty of care in a principal-advisor relationship. The advisor’s effort cost is ideologically too high for a certain investment. This bias can lead to a breach of care, if the advisor’s investigative effort is unobservable by the principal. The principal audits and sues the […]
Alex Raskolnikov, ‘A new view of formal equality and a case for predistribution’
ABSTRACT A long-held egalitarian view is that formal equality – the absence of formal legal distinctions based on the material resources of individuals – is regressive. If legal rules are the same for the rich and the poor, the rich benefit and the poor suffer. This Essay argues that this view is mistaken. Far from […]
Vincent Okonkwo, ‘Is Money Money? Digital Currencies, Moneyness, and the Future of the Legal Fiction of Money’
ABSTRACT Most academic analyses on the ‘money’ status of cryptocurrency are performed either formalistically or superficially. The paper on the subject and the unity of conclusions are suggestive of this fact. These assessments religiously ask whether cryptocurrencies meet ‘definitive’ standards of ‘money-ness’ in monetary economics. They would mostly resolve that cryptocurrencies do not. This article […]
Crettez and Obidzinski, ‘The Choice of Land Titling System and the Blockchain’
ABSTRACT Should the advent of the blockchain lead to the reorganization or even the replacement of traditional land titling systems? In addressing this issue, we first generalize the model developed by Arruñada and Garoupa (2005) to study optimal land titling systems. Instead of considering only recording and registration alone, we examine an a priori infinite […]
Purnoor Tak, ‘Property Rights and Financial Access’
ABSTRACT This paper investigates the effect of property rights on financial inclusion and subsequent changes in labor market participation and human capital investment. Using hand-collected savings bank data linked to the English census, I exploit the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act, which granted married women ownership of their financial assets. A 10% increase in the […]
Guttel and Leibovitch, ‘Sanctions and Restitution’
ABSTRACT Objections to harsh criminal sanctions have long been offender centered. This Article demonstrates that harsh sanctions also disadvantage victims. Using rich data from Pennsylvania, and employing prior record as an instrumental variable, we examine the interplay between incarceration length and restitution. Our findings show that longer incarceration periods reduce the likelihood as well as […]
Guy Rub, ‘Copyright’s Invisible Hand: Subsidizing America’s Cultural Institutions’
ABSTRACT The doctrine of copyright exhaustion conceals a substantial and underappreciated subsidy at the heart of American copyright law. For more than a century, it has operated as a deliberate congressional scheme transferring billions of dollars in value to cultural institutions, such as libraries, museums, and galleries. This Essay reconceptualizes copyright law as a system […]