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Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

1998

Economics

Vanderbilt Law Review

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Growing Pains Of Behavioral Law And Economics, Thomas S. Ulen Nov 1998

The Growing Pains Of Behavioral Law And Economics, Thomas S. Ulen

Vanderbilt Law Review

We are at the beginning of behavioral law and economics. We now see only dimly the outlines of the elaborate theory of decision making that is to come. We are like the independent scholars who examined the various parts of a very large animal and then tried to put together their reports to describe that animal; we each have bits and pieces of the elephant but no clear image of the entire beast. But we should not despair. We must remember that this behavioralist discipline is, as scholarly developments go, young. Indeed, the conventional law and economics model, to which …


Can There Be A Behavioral Law And Economics?, Samuel Issacharoff Nov 1998

Can There Be A Behavioral Law And Economics?, Samuel Issacharoff

Vanderbilt Law Review

The emergence of the modern law and economics analysis generally is dated to the early 1960s with the publication of seminal work by Ronald Coase' and subsequently by Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed. These articles laid the foundation for the relation between legal rules, wealth maximization, and transaction costs, which provided the pivotal application of economic analysis to legal problems. However, the current sweep of law and economics would have been inconceivable without Gary Becker's insight into the application of neoclassical comparisons of marginal utility to the stuff of everyday life. Becker's analysis of routine decision making in terms of …


Remedies And The Psychology Of Ownership, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Forest Jourden Nov 1998

Remedies And The Psychology Of Ownership, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Forest Jourden

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is surprising that there are cases like Boomer v. Atlantic Cement Co.I The plaintiffs in Boomer were eight homeowners seeking injunctive relief against the dust and noise produced by a neighboring cement plant, the Atlantic Cement Company. The trial court declared Atlantic Cement a nuisance, but refused to enjoin the plant's operations. Instead, the court awarded monetary damages to the plaintiffs for the loss in value to their property attributable to the defendant's activities. The dissatisfied plaintiffs appealed, but ultimately New York's highest court declared that they were not entitled to injunctive relief. That the plaintiffs sued the plant …


Behavioral Economics, The Economic Analysis Of Bankruptcy Law And The Pricing Of Credit, Robert K. Rasmussen Nov 1998

Behavioral Economics, The Economic Analysis Of Bankruptcy Law And The Pricing Of Credit, Robert K. Rasmussen

Vanderbilt Law Review

Bankruptcy has been a fertile ground for the economic analysis of law. A significant portion of bankruptcy scholarship during the past fifteen years applies the basic assumptions of standard economic theory to the problems caused by financial distress. This scholarship begins with the premise that people make choices in a rational manner in order to maximize their individual utility. It applies this axiom to questions ranging from when do individuals file for bankruptcy to how bankruptcy laws affect firms' investment decisions. As it has in most other areas of law (especially private law), law and economics has both reshaped our …


Putting Rational Actors In Their Place: Economics And Phenomenology, Edward L. Rubin Nov 1998

Putting Rational Actors In Their Place: Economics And Phenomenology, Edward L. Rubin

Vanderbilt Law Review

The model of human behavior that is used in microeconomics is both normative and descriptive. As a normative model, it is an historical successor to the medieval concept of grace and the Renaissance concept of virtue. As a descriptive model, it is a theory of human psychology. Economists tend to deemphasize this point be- cause psychology is a notoriously "soft" science, and economists aspire to the "hard" sciences' precision. Nonetheless, any model that states the way human beings behave under specified circumstances is necessarily a theory of the way the human mind functions, and thus be- longs in the category …