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Social and Behavioral Sciences

Selected Works

Selected Works

2009

Law and Economics

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Law

An Introduction To Social Choice, Maxwell L. Stearns Mar 2009

An Introduction To Social Choice, Maxwell L. Stearns

Maxwell L. Stearns

Social choice studies the differing implications of the concept of rationality (or transitivity) for individuals versus groups under specified conditions and the significance of these differences in various institutional decision making contexts. This introductory chapter on social choice for the Elgar Handbook on Public Choice (Elgar Publishing Company, Dan Farber and Anne O’Connell, editors), introduces the basic framework of social choice, considers the implications of social choice for various legal and policy contexts, and provides a framework for evaluating a range of normative proposals grounded in social choice for reforming lawmaking institutions. After a brief introduction, part II introduces the …

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Invisible Ink In The Eighth Arrondissement, Karl T. Muth Dec 2008

Invisible Ink In The Eighth Arrondissement, Karl T. Muth

Karl T Muth

IMPORTANT: This document may prompt you for a username and password. If this occurs, please simply click "cancel" and the document will load. Thank you. This Article deals with the history of the secret contract that governs the distribution of economic rents enjoyed by Formula One. It further explores the environment in which this secret contract evolved and briefly discusses applications for secret contracts in other scenarios and industries.

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Opportunism, Uncertainty, And Relational Contracting - Antitrust Rules In The Film Industry, Ryan M. Riegg Dec 2008

Opportunism, Uncertainty, And Relational Contracting - Antitrust Rules In The Film Industry, Ryan M. Riegg

Ryan M. Riegg

For a long time, economists and investors have been baffled as to why Studios continue to produce movies with "blockbuster"-sized budgets (i.e. movies with budgets over $100 million) when producing those movies expose Studios to considerable economic risk.
By explaining the unique economics of the Film industry, and the effect of the Paramount (antitrust) rules on Film distribution contracts, this article provides an explanation to the puzzle of the blockbuster that is confirmed by recent trends in Film industry. Additionally, by using the Film industry as a model, this article also demonstrates how relational contracting can be understood as a …

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Behavioral Economic Issues In American & Islamic Marriage & Divorce Law, Ryan M. Riegg Dec 2008

Behavioral Economic Issues In American & Islamic Marriage & Divorce Law, Ryan M. Riegg

Ryan M. Riegg

The article critiques traditional economic theory, which frequently fails to address issues like "trust" in the forming of both contractual and marital relationships, and addresses problems within both the American and Islamic marriage & divorce systems from a behavioral economic, and comparative, perspective.

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What Is The Probability Your Vote Will Make A Difference?, Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, Aaron S. Edlin Dec 2008

What Is The Probability Your Vote Will Make A Difference?, Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, Aaron S. Edlin

Aaron Edlin

One of the reasonable motivations for voting is that one vote can make a difference, as Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan [2007] showed. In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win, times the probability the vote in your state is tied in that event. We computed these probabilities a week before the 2008 presidential election, using state-by-state election forecasts based on the latest polls. The states where a single vote was most likely to matter are New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Colorado, …

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One Size Does Not Fit All: A Framework For Tailoring Intellectual Property Rights, Michael W. Carroll Dec 2008

One Size Does Not Fit All: A Framework For Tailoring Intellectual Property Rights, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

The United States and its trading partners have adopted cultural and innovation policies under which the government grants one-size-fits-all patents and copyrights to inventors and authors. On a global basis, the reasons for doing so vary, but in the United States granting intellectual property rights has been justified as the principal means of promoting innovation and cultural progress. Until recently, however, few have questioned the wisdom of using such blunt policy instruments to promote progress in a wide range of industries in which the economics of innovation varies considerably.

Provisionally accepting the assumptions of the traditional economic case for intellectual …

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