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Well-Being Analysis Vs. Cost-Benefit Analysis (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur) (Symposium), Christopher J. Buccafusco
Well-Being Analysis Vs. Cost-Benefit Analysis (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur) (Symposium), Christopher J. Buccafusco
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Cost-benefit analysis is the primary tool used by policymakers to inform administrative decisionmaking. Yet its methodology of converting preferences (often hypothetical ones) into dollar figures, then using those dollar figures as proxies for quality of life, creates systemic errors so large as to deprive the tool of value. These problems have been lamented by many scholars, and recent calls have gone out from world leaders and prominent economists to find an alternative analytical device that would measure quality of life more directly. This Article proposes well-being analysis (WBA) as that alternative. Relying on data from the field of hedonic psychology …
Retribution And The Experience Of Punishment, Christopher J. Buccafusco, J. Bronsteen, J. Masur
Retribution And The Experience Of Punishment, Christopher J. Buccafusco, J. Bronsteen, J. Masur
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In a prior article, we argued that punishment theorists need to take into account the counterintuitive findings from hedonic psychology about how offenders typically experience punishment. Punishment generally involves the imposition of negative experience. The reason that greater fines and prison sentences constitute more severe punishments than lesser ones is, in large part, that they are assumed to impose greater negative experience. Hedonic adaptation reduces that difference in negative experience, thereby undermining efforts to achieve proportionality in punishment. Anyone who values punishing more serious crimes more severely than less serious crimes by an appropriate amount - as virtually everyone does …
Valuing Intellectual Property: An Experiment, Christopher J. Buccafusco, C. Sprigman
Valuing Intellectual Property: An Experiment, Christopher J. Buccafusco, C. Sprigman
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In this article we report on the results of an experiment we performed to determine whether transactions in intellectual property (IP) are subject to the valuation anomalies commonly referred to as “endowment effects”. Traditional conceptions of the value of IP rely on assumptions about human rationality derived from classical economics. The law assumes that when people make decisions about buying, selling, and licensing IP they do so with fixed, context-independent preferences. Over the past several decades, this rational actor model of classical economics has come under attack by behavioral data showing that people do not always make strictly rational decisions. …
Welfare As Happiness (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur), Christopher J. Buccafusco
Welfare As Happiness (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur), Christopher J. Buccafusco
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Perhaps the most important goal of law and policy is improving people’s lives. But what constitutes improvement? What is quality of life, and how can it be measured? In previous articles, we have used insights from the new field of hedonic psychology to analyze central questions in civil and criminal justice, and we now apply those insights to a broader inquiry: how can the law make life better? The leading accounts of human welfare in law, economics, and philosophy are preference-satisfaction - getting what one wants - and objective list approaches - possessing an enumerated set of capabilities. This Article …
Happiness And Punishment (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur), Christopher J. Buccafusco
Happiness And Punishment (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur), Christopher J. Buccafusco
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This article continues our project to apply groundbreaking new literature on the behavioral psychology of human happiness to some of the most deeply analyzed questions in law. Here we explain that the new psychological understandings of happiness interact in startling ways with the leading theories of criminal punishment. Punishment theorists, both retributivist and utilitarian, have failed to account for human beings' ability to adapt to changed circumstances, including fines and (surprisingly) imprisonment. At the same time, these theorists have largely ignored the severe hedonic losses brought about by the post-prison social and economic deprivations (unemployment, divorce, and disease) caused by …
Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur), Christopher J. Buccafusco
Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur), Christopher J. Buccafusco
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This paper examines the burgeoning psychological literature on happiness and hedonic adaptation (a person's capacity to preserve or recapture her level of happiness by adjusting to changed circumstances), bringing this literature to bear on a previously overlooked aspect of the civil litigation process: the probability of pre-trial settlement. The glacial pace of civil litigation is commonly thought of as a regrettable source of costs to the relevant parties. Even relatively straightforward personal injury lawsuits can last for as long as two years, delaying the arrival of necessary redress to the tort victim and forcing the litigants to expend ever greater …