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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Constitution Of The Roman Republic: A Political Economy Perspective, Eric A. Posner
The Constitution Of The Roman Republic: A Political Economy Perspective, Eric A. Posner
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
The constitution of the Roman Republic featured a system of checks and balances that would eventually influence the American founders, yet it had very different characteristics from the system of separation of powers that the founders created. The Roman senate gave advice but did not legislate; the people voted directly on bills and appointments in popular assemblies; and a group of magistrates, led by a pair of consuls, proposed bills, brought prosecutions, served as judges, led military forces, and performed other governmental functions. This paper analyzes the Roman constitution from the perspective of agency theory, and argues that the extensive …
Pricing Terms In Sovereign Debt Contracts: A Greek Case Study With Implications For The European Crisis Resolution Mechanism, Eric A. Posner, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati
Pricing Terms In Sovereign Debt Contracts: A Greek Case Study With Implications For The European Crisis Resolution Mechanism, Eric A. Posner, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Conventional wisdom holds the boilerplate contract terms are ignored by parties, and thus are not priced into contracts. We test this view by comparing Greek sovereign bonds that have Greek choice-of-law terms and Greek sovereign bonds that have English choice-of-law terms. Because Greece can change the terms of Greek-law bonds unilaterally by changing Greek law, and cannot change the terms of English-law bonds, Greek-law bonds should be riskier, with higher yields and lower prices. The spread between the two types of bonds should increase when the probability of Greek default increases. Recent events allow us to test this hypothesis, and …
Willpower Taxes, Lee Anne Fennell
Willpower Taxes, Lee Anne Fennell
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Self-control and related concepts appear regularly in tax discussions, but often they are invoked hazily or blurred together with other aspects of choice over time. Despite the evident relevance of willpower to consumption patterns, wealth accumulation, and, ultimately, well-being, there is no consensus about whether and how heterogeneity along this dimension should factor into tax policy. There is support in the tax literature for such divergent responses as funneling more resources to low-willpower people, penalizing them for their lapses, and limiting their choices. Whether we should follow one of these approaches, or some other approach entirely, requires a careful analysis …
Agency Design And Distributive Politics, Jacob Gersen, Christopher R. Berry
Agency Design And Distributive Politics, Jacob Gersen, Christopher R. Berry
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This paper targets the intersection of two generally distinct literatures: political control of administrative agencies and distributive politics. Based on a comprehensive database of federal spending that tracks allocations from each agency to each congressional district for every year from 1984 through 2007, we analyze the responsiveness of agency spending decisions to presidential and congressional influences. Our research design uses district-by-agency fixed effects to identify the effects of a district's political characteristics on agency spending allocations. Because most agencies distribute federal funds, we are able to provide empirical evidence about the relationship between structural features of administrative agencies and the …
The Razors-And-Blades Myth(S), Randal C. Picker
The Razors-And-Blades Myth(S), Randal C. Picker
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Voters, Non-Voters, And The Implications Of Election Timing For Public Policy, Jacob Gersen, Christopher R. Berry
Voters, Non-Voters, And The Implications Of Election Timing For Public Policy, Jacob Gersen, Christopher R. Berry
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This paper makes use of variation in the timing of local elections to shed light on one of the core questions in democratic politics: what would happen if everyone voted? Does a low voter turnout rate imply that a small subset of special interest voters controls politics and policy? Or, are voters largely representative of non-voters such that neither the outcomes of elections nor resulting public policies would change even if everyone participated? Rather than rely on surveys of nonvoters to extrapolate their hypothetical behavior, we rely on a natural experiment created by a 1980s change in the California Election …
Damages For Unlicensed Use, Omri Ben-Shahar
Damages For Unlicensed Use, Omri Ben-Shahar
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This article investigates the distinction between breach of license and infringement of property rights, and how damages ought to be measured for each. It identifies two remedial puzzles. First, under current law the line between breach of a license contract and infringement of a property right is murky, and thus minor differences between violations could lead to major differences in damage measures. Second, damages for infringement are augmented in a subtle but distortive way, by giving owners an option to choose between the greater of two computation measures, each based on different information. The article argues that these existing remedial …
Human Rights, The Laws Of War, And Reciprocity, Eric A. Posner
Human Rights, The Laws Of War, And Reciprocity, Eric A. Posner
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Human rights law does not appear to enjoy as high a level of compliance as the laws of war, yet is institutionalized to a greater degree. This paper argues that the reason for this difference is related to the strategic structure of international law. The laws of war are governed by a regime of reciprocity, which can produce self-enforcing patterns of behavior, whereas the human rights regime attempts to produce public goods and is thus subject to collective action problems. The more elaborate human rights institutions are designed to overcome these problems but fall prey to second-order collective action problems. …
Pseudonymous Litigation, Lior Strahilevitz
Pseudonymous Litigation, Lior Strahilevitz
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Risk As A Proxy For Race, Bernard E. Harcourt
Risk As A Proxy For Race, Bernard E. Harcourt
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
What Is So Special About Intangible Property? The Case For Intelligent Carryovers, Richard A. Epstein
What Is So Special About Intangible Property? The Case For Intelligent Carryovers, Richard A. Epstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
One of the major controversies in modern intellectual property law is the extent to which property rights conceptions, developed in connection with land or other forms of tangible property, can be carried over to different forms of property, such as rights in the spectrum or in patents and copyrights. This article defends the thesis that, once the differences in the optimal duration of patents and copyrights are taken into account, the carryover of basic property conceptions from tangible to intangible property should be much encouraged. In some instances, the property rights concepts applicable to land often work even better for …
Carbon Dioxide: Our Newest Pollutant, Richard A. Epstein
Carbon Dioxide: Our Newest Pollutant, Richard A. Epstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Ever since the controversial Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, carbon dioxide has been treated as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. This article argues that this decision was wrong as a matter of statutory construction and sound as a matter of sound social policy: the CAA is the wrong vehicle to deal with either carbon dioxide of global warming. On the present state of the evidence, the case for strong restraints on carbon dioxide emissions has not been made. The evidence in favor of the close linkage between carbon dioxide and global warming has not been clearly …
Climate Regulation And The Limits Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, Eric A. Posner, Jonathan Masur
Climate Regulation And The Limits Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, Eric A. Posner, Jonathan Masur
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
One Bridge Too Far: Why The Employee Free Choice Act Has, And Should, Fail, Richard A. Epstein
One Bridge Too Far: Why The Employee Free Choice Act Has, And Should, Fail, Richard A. Epstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
The Employer Free Choice Act has had enjoyed strong academic support. but thus far has been stymied by fierce political resistance to its central positions that first institute a card-check for the selection of a union and then requires mandatory arbitration if the parties cannot agree to a new contract within 130 days of union recognition. This articles critiques the arguments made in support of this fundamental revision of labor law offered by Craig Becker, Benjamin Sachs, and Catherine Fisk & Adam Pulver, all of which purport to show that flaws in the current system of collective bargaining need major …
Patent Inflation, Jonathan Masur
Patent Inflation, Jonathan Masur
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Questioning The Frequency And Wisdom Of Compulsory Licensing For Pharmaceutical Patents, F. Scott Kieff, Richard A. Epstein
Questioning The Frequency And Wisdom Of Compulsory Licensing For Pharmaceutical Patents, F. Scott Kieff, Richard A. Epstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Many advocates for using compulsory licensing ("CL") for pharmaceutical patents in developing countries like Thailand rest their case in part on the purported use of CL in the United States. In this paper we take issue with that proposition on several grounds. As a theoretical matter, we argue that the basic presumption in favor of voluntary licenses for IP should apply in the international arena, in addition to the domestic one. In the international context, voluntary licenses are of special importance because they strengthen the supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals and ease the government enforcement of safety standards. Next, this …
Randomization And The Fourth Amendment, Tracey L. Meares, Bernard E. Harcourt
Randomization And The Fourth Amendment, Tracey L. Meares, Bernard E. Harcourt
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Risk Of Death, Ariel Porat, Avraham D. Tabbach
Risk Of Death, Ariel Porat, Avraham D. Tabbach
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
When people face the risk of death, and when they ascribe no value to their wealth post-death, they over-invest in precautions in order to reduce that risk. There are two main reasons for such over-investment. First, people under risk of death discount their risk-reduction costs by the probability of death following precautions. Second, people facing the risk of death consider the consumption of their wealth when alive to be part of their benefit from risk-reduction. From a social perspective, people's wealth does not cease to exist after death. Therefore, discounting costs by the probability of death and taking into account …
Organizing Competition And Cooperation After American Needle, Randal C. Picker
Organizing Competition And Cooperation After American Needle, Randal C. Picker
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Possession Puzzles, Lee Anne Fennell
Possession Puzzles, Lee Anne Fennell
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Implicit Compensation, M. Todd Henderson
Implicit Compensation, M. Todd Henderson
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This Paper presents evidence boards of directors bargain with executives about the profits they expect to make from trades in firm stock. In general, the evidence suggests executives whose trading freedom is increased experience reductions in other forms of pay to offset the potential gains from trading. This "implicit compensation" is a significant component of pay (about 20 percent). This result is consistent with (and the flipside of) a study by Darren Roulstone, finding firms that restrict trading increase compensation to offset the lost opportunities from trading. While Roulstone finds that firms restricting trading pay more, this Paper finds that …
The Institutional Dynamics Of Transition Relief, Jonathan Remy Nash, Jonathan Masur
The Institutional Dynamics Of Transition Relief, Jonathan Remy Nash, Jonathan Masur
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Whether and how to provide transition relief from a change in legal regime is a question of critical importance. Legislatures and agencies effect changes to the law constantly, and affected private actors often seek relief from those changes, at least in the short term. Scholarship on transition relief therefore has focused almost entirely on examining when transition relief might be justified and now recognizes that there may be settings where relief from legal transitions is appropriate. Yet largely absent from these treatments is an answer to the question of which institutional actor is best positioned to decide when legal transition …
Unbundling Risk, Lee Anne Fennell
Unbundling Risk, Lee Anne Fennell
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Judicial Ability And Securities Class Actions, Eric A. Posner, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati
Judicial Ability And Securities Class Actions, Eric A. Posner, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
We exploit a new data set of judicial rulings on motions in order to investigate the relationship between judicial ability and judicial outcomes. The data set consists of federal district judges' rulings on motions to dismiss, to approve the lead plaintiff, and to approve attorneys' fees in securities class actions cases, and also judges' decisions to remove themselves from cases. We predict that higher-quality judges, as measured by citations, affirmance rates, and similar criteria, are more likely to dismiss cases, reject lead plaintiffs, reject attorneys' fees, and retain cases rather than hand them over to other judges. Our results are …
The Failure Of Mandated Disclosure, Carl E. Schneider, Omri Ben-Shahar
The Failure Of Mandated Disclosure, Carl E. Schneider, Omri Ben-Shahar
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This article explores the spectacular prevalence, and failure, of the single most common technique for protecting personal autonomy in modern society: mandated disclosure. The article has four sections: (1) A comprehensive summary of the recurring use of mandated disclosures, in many forms and circumstances, in the areas of consumer and borrower protection, patient informed consent, contract formation, and constitutional rights; (2) A survey of the empirical literature documenting the failure of the mandated disclosure regime in informing people and in improving their decisions; (3) An account of the multitude of reasons mandated disclosures fail, focusing on the political dynamics underlying …
The Right To Withdraw In Contract Law, Eric A. Posner, Omri Ben-Shahar
The Right To Withdraw In Contract Law, Eric A. Posner, Omri Ben-Shahar
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
European law gives consumers the right to withdraw from a range of contracts for goods and services; American law, with narrow exceptions, does not. Yet merchants in the United States frequently provide by contract that consumers have the right to return goods. We analyze the right to withdraw in a model that incorporates a tradeoff between allowing consumers to learn about goods that they purchase and protecting sellers from the depreciation of those goods. The right to withdraw—at least, as a default rule—has a plausible economic basis. We identify a nascent version of it in the well-known, controversial case of …
The Subprime Crisis And Financial Regulation: International And Comparative Perspectives, Kenneth W. Dam
The Subprime Crisis And Financial Regulation: International And Comparative Perspectives, Kenneth W. Dam
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Inside The Coasean Firm: Competence As A Random Variable, Richard A. Epstein
Inside The Coasean Firm: Competence As A Random Variable, Richard A. Epstein
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
The work of Ronald Coase is notable for two primary reasons. First, it introduced the notion of transaction costs to explain the formation and maintenance of firms, Second, it advanced our understanding of the critical topic of social costs. Yet, while transaction costs are key to understanding why firms are organized, they do not offer a complete explanation of how they are organized. A richer account of the problem properly stresses that differences in individual levels of competence, as well as individual variations in temperament and taste, explain why, for example, some firms are organized as partnerships and others as …
The Economics Of Climate Enforcement, Omri Ben-Shahar, Anu Bradford
The Economics Of Climate Enforcement, Omri Ben-Shahar, Anu Bradford
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Any breakthrough in international climate change negotiations has to address the enforcement problem: how to entice reluctant states to meet the emission reduction targets set by treaties. The challenge is acute because traditional enforcement measures—sanctions or rewards—are insufficient. The threat to impose sanctions on violator states is too costly and hence not credible; and the magnitude of rewards violators demand for their compliance is excessive. This article proposes a novel enforcement mechanism, which combines sanctions and rewards in a way that is both credible and cheaper than existing proposals. The idea is to set up a reward fund that serves …
The Endurance Of National Constitutions, Tom Ginsburg, James Melton, Zachary Elkins
The Endurance Of National Constitutions, Tom Ginsburg, James Melton, Zachary Elkins
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.