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University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Public Law and Legal Theory

2010

Rational choice

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Diverging Family Structure And “Rational” Behavior: The Decline In Marriage As A Disorder Of Choice, Amy L. Wax May 2010

Diverging Family Structure And “Rational” Behavior: The Decline In Marriage As A Disorder Of Choice, Amy L. Wax

All Faculty Scholarship

The past fifty years have witnessed a growing divergence in family structure by social class, income, education, and race. The goal is to explain why significant segments of the population are moving away from the traditional patterns of family and reproduction. Most demographers acknowledge that external and material constraints fail to account for most of the present dispersion by class and race in marriage, divorce, and patterns of childbearing. Nor do these factors explain the widening of disparities over time. In attempting to improve on prior theories, this paper proposes a different explanation for these developments. It argues that demographic …


The Hidden Function Of Takings Compensation, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky Jan 2010

The Hidden Function Of Takings Compensation, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

To date, scholars have justified the constitutional mandate to pay compensation for takings of property on the intuitively appealing grounds that fairness demands recompensing aggrieved owners; on the basis of a belief that government that fails to pay will suffer from “fiscal illusion” and take excessively; or due to the need to neutralize politically powerful property owners who would otherwise foil socially beneficial projects. This Essay offers a new explanation of the role of takings compensation in ensuring good government. Inspired by public choice theory, we argue that takings compensation is intended to reduce the incentives for corruption by limiting …