Category Archives: Law and Economics
Fabrizio Esposito, ‘On the analytical strategies for Law and Political Economy research: Structural integration and epistemic translation are better than isolationism to study the legal-economic nexus’
ABSTRACT This article distinguishes isolationist and integrationist accounts of the legal-economic nexus. Isolationists deny the possibility of integrating different theoretical perspectives, while integrationists try to unify different accounts. Leading legal theorists have recently presented isolationist efficiency-, liberty-, and democracy-centred accounts of the market. It is argued that the legal–economic nexus is an integrationist concept, requiring […]
Schuster and Holden, ‘Superfluous Copyright and The Norm of Authenticity: An Empirical Study’
ABSTRACT Baseball cards sit at the intersection of culture, copyright law, and economics. When vintage sets entered the public domain in the 1980s, reprints emerged as potential market substitutes. Standard theory suggests that substitution should lower prices of originals, but collectibles defy this logic due to the Norm of Authenticity – a phenomenon whereby collectors […]
Yunsieg Kim, ‘Incognito Consumer Harm’
ABSTRACT What good is a legal system built for visible injuries in a world where injury is designed to be invisible? This Article identifies and theorizes incognito consumer harm: consumer-facing wrongdoing designed to remain unnoticed by most victims. A robot vacuum cleaner covertly records video inside consumers’ homes. A seemingly helpful browser extension records everything […]
Cass Sunstein, ‘Five Objections to Commodification’
ABSTRACT In free markets, countless goods may be bought and sold. What was once not traded on markets-for example, access to public parks or sexual and reproductive capacities might be turned into a commodity. Time and again, allowing things to be bought and sold increases both autonomy and welfare. Still, there are pervasive objections to […]
‘The Evaluative Emptiness of the Economic Approach to Law’
Law & economics traces its intellectual roots to the University of Chicago. That lineage still shapes how the field is understood. Chicago price theory – especially Gary Becker’s (1976) systematic application of maximization, equilibrium, and stable preferences across social life, and George Stigler’s (1992, p 459) suggestion that ‘every durable social institution or practice is […]
Sarath Sanga, ‘The LPE Critique of Law and Economics’
ABSTRACT The law and political economy (LPE) critique of law and economics offers a clarion call reminding us that methods are never just methods. They are vantage points on power that affect what we see and what we overlook. The LPE critique insists that economics is not a neutral science and that the law and […]
Davidson and Simonson, ‘Expanding Sources of Knowledge in Legal Scholarship’
ABSTRACT Do police help keep us safe? Do prisons make the world less violent? This Essay argues that effectively engaging with these and other notoriously difficult questions about our criminal legal system requires a diverse suite of methodologies. Too often, however, scholars have purported to answer these questions definitively by reference only to top-down, state-created, […]
Stephen Lewarne, ‘When Contracts Do Not Bind: Money, Institutional Volatility, and the Unit of Account’
ABSTRACT Nominal contracts are typically assumed to bind whenever trade occurs. This paper shows that nominal contracts may fail to bind in equilibrium even in the absence of inflation volatility, liquidity shortages, or price rigidities, once enforceability becomes state contingent. The mechanism operates through the credibility of the unit of account, which is modeled as […]
Chilton, Macey and Versteeg, ‘Contemporary Law and Economics’
ABSTRACT When law and economics (L&E) emerged as a field in the middle of the twentieth century, it focused on using economic theory to study the common law. During this period, L&E offered insights so novel that it not only profoundly influenced legal doctrine, but the movement’s key figures also became some of the most […]
Lu and Garoupa, ‘Judicial Interest Rates: Strategic Considerations’
ABSTRACT The appropriate method for determining the judicial interest rate remains unsettled. This article contributes to the debate by presenting a model that accounts for the complexities of party incentives and strategic delays in litigation. Additionally, we provide a rational explanation for the widespread use of a party-independent interest rate in many jurisdictions. When a […]