Category Archives: Law and Economics
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 […]
Kim and Kim, ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Paradox of Professional Liability’
ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping professional services and complicating liability design. We develop a framework where experts differing in hidden ability adopt AI and choose effort. AI lowers accident risk but raises compliance costs. Even with asymmetric information, strict liability induces efficient AI adoption and care but negligence induces shirking and inefficient adoption, unless […]
Hannu Vartiainen, ‘Recursively Renegotiation-Proof Contracts’
ABSTRACT We modify the concept of renegotiation-proofness by stating that a contract is credible if it is robust against credible redesigns. A contract that is, in this sense, recursively renegotiation-proof is shown to exist under general conditions. We provide a procedure to identify all contracts that meet the property. The framework is applied to bilateral […]
Michael Rustad, ‘Punitive Damages in Products Liability Revisited (1991-2024)’
ABSTRACT In August 2025, a Florida jury awarded a twenty-two-year-old female’s estate and another badly injured person two hundred million dollars in punitive damages in a case arising out of a 2019 Tesla crash that occurred when the car was in Autopilot mode. Punitive damages were based on the contention that Tesla’s Autopilot could not […]
Kidd and Simmons, ‘Public Choice and Public Trust’
ABSTRACT The public trust doctrine, originally a legal principle designed to protect public access to navigable waters for commerce and navigation, has been expanded far beyond its historical scope. Courts and policymakers now use the doctrine as a broad instrument of environmental intervention, often invoking it to justify sweeping regulatory mandates and restrictions on private […]
Call for Papers: ‘Economic Aspects of the Constitution’: University of Glasgow, 16-17 April 2026
The workshop seeks to explore those aspects of the constitutional order of the United Kingdom (as well as its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies) which have an economic element. Any proposal for a paper which fits the workshop theme is welcome, but possible topics include the following: … (more)