Law Commons^™

Jogelmélet Jog Nélkül? [Legal Theory Without Law?], Péter Cserne

Péter Cserne

No abstract provided.

The Italian Chamber Of Lords Sits On Listed Company Boards. An Empirical Analysis Of Italian Listed Company Boards From 1998 To 2006 - Presentation (Powerpoint Format), Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Andrea Polo

Paolo Santella

No abstract provided.

Vote For Charity's Sake, Aaron S. Edlin, Andrew Gelman, Noah Kaplan

Aaron Edlin

In a battleground state like Colorado or New Mexico, voting in the presidential election may be equivalent to giving $30,000 - $50,000 to others in expected value, and as such is an extremely efficient form of charity.

Quashing The Financial Firestorm, Aaron S. Edlin

Aaron Edlin

Start the financial rescue with containment, establish unlimited deposit insurance and continuous access to funds, then move to a well thought-out plan to quash the financial flames.

Framing The Choice Between Cash And Courthouse: Experiences With The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, Gillian K. Hadfield

Gillian K Hadfield

In this paper I report the results of a quantitative and qualitative empirical study of how those who were injured or lost a family member in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks evaluated the tradeoff between a cash payment--available through the Victim Compensation Fund--and the pursuit of litigation. Responses make it clear that potential plaintiffs saw much more at stake than monetary compensation and that the choice to forego litigation required the sacrifice of important non-monetary, civic, values: obtaining and publicizing information about what happened, prompting public findings of accountability for those responsible, and participating in the process of ensuring …

Behavioral Public Finance, Edward J. Mccaffery

Edward J McCaffery

These are slides from a presentation to the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research, Squaw Valley Conference, May, 2008 (at which event Michael Jensen got me to agree to post these slides as a pdf on SSRN . . . ). The task is to give an overview of what I hope to be an emerging field of behavioral public finance. Behavioral finance, as per Barberis and Thaler 2003 (and others), consists of two parts: (1) individual level heuristics and biases, which can lead to sub-optimal (inconsistent) judgment and decision-making, and (2) institutional arbitrage mechanisms. In private finance and …

Comments On Liebman And Zeckhauser, Simple Humans, Complex Insurance, Subtle Subsidies, Edward J. Mccaffery

Edward J McCaffery

These are brief comments on an excellent paper by Jeffrey Liebman and Richard Zeckhauser, prepared for a conference sponsored by the Urban Institute and Brookings on tax and health care policy. Liebman and Zeckhauser summarize the complexities involved in making optimal health insurance decisions, and offer generally cautionary notes about conflating these with tax law (a theme of the conference). Most importantly, Liebman and Zeckhauser suggest a positive role for employers in health care and insurance decisions, as better setters or framers of choice sets—witness 401(k) plans. In this Commentary, I applaud Leibman and Zeckhauser’s general work and particular observation, …

The Italian Chamber Of Lords Sits On Listed Company Boards. An Empirical Analysis Of Italian Listed Company Boards From 1998 To 2006 - Presentation (Powerpoint Format), Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Andrea Polo

Paolo Santella

No abstract provided.

Organizational Perspectives On Contracts, Gordon Smith, Brayden King

D. Gordon Smith

A Positive Theory Of Eminent Domain, Eric Kades

Eric A. Kades

Chronicles Of A Failure: From A Renegotiation Clause To Arbitration Of Transnational Contracts, Luigi Russi

Luigi Russi

The present paper recounts the various steps which parties to a transnational contract containing a renegotiation clause may need to go through, should the circumstances accounted for in the renegotiation clause come to existence. To this end, the article sets off from an outline of the most relevant structural features and functions of renegotiation clauses, and of the typical obligations which may derive therefrom.

Secondly, the paper’s focus narrows down to the – by no means infrequent – case of failure to renegotiate in presence of an arbitration clause governing the parties’ agreement. In the latter case, in particular, several …

Fairness In Contractual Relations: An Economic-Oriented Understanding Of Good Faith Performance, Luigi Russi

Luigi Russi

This is a derivative version of 'Can Good Faith Performance Be Unfair? An Economic Framework for Understanding the Problem', which appeared in the Whittier Law Review, vol. 29, 2008. In comparison to the version therein published, I have eliminated the mathematical appendix, and attempted to outline my reasoning exclusively in words, for it to be accessible to a wider readership.

The Overcharge As A Measure For Antitrust Damages, Martijn Han, Maarten Pieter Schinkel, Jan Tuinstra

Martijn A. Han

Victims of antitrust violations can recover damages in court. Yet, the quantification of antitrust damages and to whom they accrue is often complex. An illegal price increase somewhere in the chain of production percolates through to the other layers in a ripple of partial pass-ons. The resulting reductions in sales and input demands lead to additional harm to both downstream (in)direct purchasers and upstream suppliers. Nevertheless, U.S. civil antitrust litigation is almost exclusively concerned with direct purchaser claims for (treble) damages calculated on the basis of the overcharge. Similar best practice rules are emerging in Europe. In this paper, we …

Progressive Era, Richard Adelstein

Richard Adelstein

A short interpretive summary of the period 1890 - 1914.

Estate Acts, 1600 To 1830: A New Source For British History, Gary Richardson

Gary Richardson

A new database demonstrates that between 1600 and 1830, Parliament passed thousands of acts restructuring rights to real and equitable estates. These estate acts enabled individuals and families to sell, mortgage, lease, exchange, and improve land previously bound by landholding and inheritance laws. This essay provides a factual foundation for research on this important topic: the law and economics of property rights during the period preceding the Industrial Revolution. Tables present time-series, cross-sectional, and panel data that should serve as a foundation for empirical analysis. Preliminary analysis indicates ways in which this new evidence may shape our understanding of British …

Steering Tax On Children’S Tobacco Consumption, Michael Adams

Michael O Adams

Careers of smokers almost always start in infancy. Therefore, the tobacco industry is confronted with the economic necessity to turn children into addicted smokers. Present efforts to reduce the smoking rate of children remain without sufficient effect, because they miss to change this incentive. The solution is to tax cigarettes smoked by children. Adequately designed this steering tax causes the industry to prevent children from smoking instead of turning them into addicted smokers.

Doing What You Say, Robert D. Cooter

Robert Cooter

Making wealth requires people to do what they say. In relationships and repeat transactions, reciprocity makes people do what they say, even without contract law. Relationships and repeat transactions, however, preclude competition. Competition involving transactions with strangers invigorates an economy and enables it to flourish. Making strangers do what they say requires them to commit legally. According to the contract principle for economic cooperation, the law should enable people to commit to doing what they say. When this principle is implemented, strangers can trust each other enough to work together even when money is at stake. Implementing this principle requires …

Закон За Спречување На Корупција Во Локалната Власт: Правни Прашања Поврзани Со Дизајнирање На Прописи И Тела За Спречување На Корупција На Локално Ниво Во Македонија, Bryane Michael

Bryane Michael (bryane.michael@stcatz.ox.ac.uk)

Општините во Република Македонија треба да усвојат прописи за спречување на корупција со цел да ја намалат корупцијата. Овој труд ги разгледува правните прашања поврзани со изработката на такви прописи и обезбедува правен совет за советите на општините за правна и економска анализа потреба за решавање на некои од потешките и подетални прашања. Најважното прашање произлегува од креирањето на модел на пропис кој општините во Македонија (или Заедницата на единиците на локалната самоуправа на Република Македонија) можат да го усвојат со цел воспоставување и работа на тела за спречување на корупција на локално ниво. Анализирана е локацијата на таквите тела, …

The Misperception Of Norms: The Psychology Of Bias And The Economics Of Equilibrium, Robert D. Cooter, Mical Feldman, Yuval Feldman

Robert Cooter

This study combines the psychology of bias and the economics of equilibrium. We focus on two of the most discussed perceptual biases found by psychologists who studied the role social norms in ethical decision making. First, psychologists found a general tendency of people to over-estimate how many other people engage in unethical behavior. We show that this bias causes more people to violate the norm than if the bias were corrected. Second, psychologists found a general tendency of a person to over-estimate how many other people act the same as he does. We show that this bias does not change …

Comentario Del Artículo De Alfonso Herranz-Loncán "Railroad Impact In Backward Economies: Spain, 1850 - 1913", Javier Agudo

Javier Agudo

Herranz-Loncán concluye que el ferrocarril sí tuvo un importante impacto en la economía española, pero no superior al experimentado en otros países como, por ejemplo, Inglaterra. ¿Cómo se explica entonces que el ferrocarril tenga el mismo impacto en un país que no tenía apenas vías de comunicación alternativas que en Inglaterra, donde ya existía una extensa y densa red de canales? La respuesta es que el transporte por ferrocarril tenía una importancia muy reducida en el total del PIB español. La economía española era una economía atrasada, y una gran parte de ella permaneció ajena al ferrocarril hasta mucho más …

Comentario Del Artículo De Joan R. Rosés Y Blanca Sánchez-Alonso "Regional Wage Convergence In Spain 1850 - 1930", Javier Agudo

Javier Agudo

Entre los años 1850 y 1930, España experimentó una importante convergencia de los salarios en las distintas regiones, al nivel de otros países europeos, si bien hay que destacar el periodo excepcional de la I Guerra Mundial, en el que aumentaron las divergencias. Los movimientos migratorios no son una variable explicativa importante en el caso de España puesto que, exceptuando los años posteriores a la I Guerra Mundial, no fueron de suficiente entidad. Hay que buscar en la creación de un mercado nacional sin barreras la causa explicativa de la convergencia de los salarios.

The Changing Role Of The State In The British Economy Between 1914 And 1921, Javier Agudo

Javier Agudo

The First World War represented the first high profile war that took place after the developed world had experienced the Industrial Revolution, and the international economic relations between countries had never been so strong. Based principally in the work by R. H. Tawney "The abolition of economic controls, 1918-1921" (Tawney; 1943), I am going to try to explain in this essay the role of the state during the conflict and how the Government reacted to the different problems that aroused in this period.

Comentario Del Artículo De Joan R. Rosés "Why Isn’T The Whole Of Spain Industrialized? New Economic Geography And Early Industrilalization, 1797-1910", Javier Agudo

Javier Agudo

España se convirtió en un mercado plenamente integrado a la lo largo del siglo XIX. Rosés no tiene ninguna duda de este hecho. Por ello, las teorías de los historiadores que intentan explicar el desarrollo de las regiones como entidades separadas no tienen ninguna consistencia. Es a través de la nueva geografía económica como puede darse una respuesta coherente y completa a por qué no toda España está industrializada.

Major League Baseball As Enron: The True Meaning Of The Mitchell Report, Mitchell J. Nathanson

Mitchell J Nathanson

Although the December 13, 2007 release of the Mitchell Report received attention for the names of the players included within, what was overlooked by many was the true import of the report: namely, the indictment of Major League Baseball itself as a corrupt entity. As such, the players identified as steroid abusers within the report were merely reflections of the larger, systemic problem that existed for decades within MLB rather than the problem in and of themselves. This article examines this revelation in detail.

Their Day In Court, Gillian K. Hadfield

Gillian K Hadfield

No abstract provided.

The Levers Of Legal Design: Institutional Determinants Of The Quality Of Law, Gillian K. Hadfield

Gillian K Hadfield

In the past decade a comparative law and economics literature has emerged that is largely organized around an effort to explain differences in country economic performance in terms of differences between common law and civil code systems. Assumptions about differences between common law and civil code regimes and the correspondence between legal regimes and judicial behavior are, however, still only weakly based in real institutional features of modern legal systems. In this paper, I examine the institutional determinants of the quality of law developed by a legal regime, drawing on a model from Hadfield (2006) which identifies five key parameters …

Audacity: Seeing Is Believing, Robert A. Eckhart

Robert A. Eckhart

Audacity is a powerful--and free--software which is very useful for teaching pronunciation, because it allows student to actually see their speech. Instead of using their ears to recognize distinctions in speech patterns, they use their eyes.

Histéresis Y Desempleo: El Caso De Francia Y Ee.Uu., Javier Agudo

Javier Agudo

La histéresis es un fenómeno por el cual los shocks afectan a la tasa de desempleo de manera permanente, de manera que cuando la economía logra recuperarse no le es posible retomar los niveles de empleo existentes antes de la recesión. La literatura afirma que el mercado laboral europeo presenta una histéresis que no existe en Estados Unidos, donde los niveles tienden a retornar a la tasa natural de desempleo. La hipótesis de histéresis se asocia a la presencia de raíces unitarias mientras que la hipótesis de tasa natural de desempleo se corresponde con un proceso estacionario. En nuestro trabajo, …

Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow

Donald J. Kochan

Conflicts created by concurrences and pluralities in court decisions create confusion in law and lower court interpretation. Rule of law values require that individuals be able to identify controlling legal principles. That task is complicated when pluralities and concurrences contribute to the vagueness or uncertainty that leaves us wondering what the controlling rule is or attempting to predict what it will evolve to become. The rule of law is at least handicapped when continuity or confidence or confusion infuse our understanding of the applicable rules. This Article uses the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rapanos v. United States to …

E-J. Mestmäcker: A Legal Theory Without Law (Book Review), Péter Cserne

Péter Cserne

This is a book review of Ernst-Joachim Mestmäcker's A Legal Theory without Law: Ponser v. Hayek on Economic Analysis of Law (Tübingen: Mohr 2007)