Category Archives: Law and Economics
Felipe Jiménez, ‘Against Deregulation’
INTRODUCTION In ‘Deregulating Contracts’, Alan Schwartz and Simone Sepe have made an important and ambitious contribution to contract theory. In their view, we have been way too conformist about contract law. Their argument is that both welfarist and deontological considerations suggest our law of contracts should be radically reformed. More specifically, they argue that contract […]
Jean-Michel Servet, ‘The Barter Myth and the Conceptual Foundations of Economic Modernity’
ABSTRACT The barter myth – the claim that money emerged from a prior system of direct exchange – occupies a foundational place in modern economic thought. While standard critiques of the barter myth emphasize its lack of empirical support, this article advances a more capacious approach that situates the myth within the conceptual formation of […]
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 […]
Schwartz and Sepe, ‘Freedom of Contract at Common Law’
ABSTRACT We defend the common law conception of freedom of contract against criticisms that unregulated contractual freedom permits strong parties to impose unjust terms on weak parties. Common law courts enforce contracts when the parties are informed, competent and free from coercion, and performance of such a contract would not impose costs on nonparties. These […]
‘You Didn’t Earn That’
Some workers are paid much more than others. In the United States, many white-collar professionals make several hundred thousand dollars per year, post-tax. That is on the order of ten times what fast food workers, janitors, and home health aides make. Global labor inequality is worse. A product manager at Apple might make thirty times […]
Tze-Shiou Chien, ‘Tort Law as Risk Allocation Contract: Some Critical Remarks on the Regulatory Deterrence Model’
ABSTRACT The standard economic analysis of law has modelled tort liabilities as the state’s instruments to reduce accident costs, comprising prevention costs and damages. This regulatory deterrence model (RD model), however, does not fit with the private autonomous nature of tort law (PA model). This is why the RD model has to resort to numerous […]
Roshana Ching, ‘Civil Litigation: Too Much, Too Little or Just Right?’
ABSTRACT Simultaneously, there is talk in the legal community of the need for efforts and procedures to encourage as well as to limit the use of the legal system. Yet there is little discussion in legal literature as to where the socially desirable level of litigation falls. As litigation comes at significant public cost, it […]
Ali Sadhik Shaik, ‘Liability Allocation in Autonomous Industrial Systems: Who Pays when the AI is Wrong?’
ABSTRACT When an autonomous robotic arm in a German automotive plant misidentified a component orientation and caused a collision that injured a line operator in 2024, six parties claimed they were not liable: the robot OEM (the arm performed within mechanical specifications), the AI vendor (the vision model met contractual accuracy thresholds), the system integrator […]
Bartosz Biskup, ‘Is Mainstream Legal Philosophy Capitalist?’
ABSTRACT No. Still, Mainstream analytic legal philosophy is tacitly supporting capital while presenting itself as neutral conceptual analysis. That is the charge of this paper. My charge is not normative, but about methodology. Hart (2012), but also Raz (2009) or Shapiro (2011), argued for what I call an ‘enabler theory’. It says that law is […]
Aubrecht and Karsunke, ‘Material Change in Circumstance, Force Majeure, Impossibility, and Related Doctrines: A Comparative Law and Economics Evaluation of the Impact of Recent Shocks on Private Contracting’
ABSTRACT This research addresses how shocks to markets impact private contracting. We compare how private contracting, and judicial systems have responded to Brexit, Covid 19, and the war in Ukraine. The UK, the US, France, and Germany are compared in terms of the legal doctrines that excuse performance due to a market-shocking event. We broadly […]