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Full-Text Articles in Law
Weasel Numbers, Reza Dibadj
Weasel Numbers, Reza Dibadj
Reza Dibadj
In an attempt to cabin the open-endedness of weasel words, traditional law and economics purports to offer certainty. This article, however, argues that this scholarship deeply misunderstands modern welfare economics and suggests, contrary to the usual economic denigrations of public bureaucracy, that a robust public administrative state is essential to improving social welfare. The article first argues that the ¿wealth maximization¿ standard of traditional law and economics is fundamentally flawed. It then addresses issues central to the economic literature of social welfare, which have yet to make their way meaningfully into the law and economics discourse. The shift in welfare …
Review Of Antitrust Law: Economic Theory And Common Law Evolution, Reza Dibadj
Review Of Antitrust Law: Economic Theory And Common Law Evolution, Reza Dibadj
Reza Dibadj
Professor Keith Hylton provides a timely discussion of the most important doctrines of modern antitrust. Underlying his discussion is the thesis that antitrust can perhaps be best understood through the lens of federal common law. This book review begins by discussing how Professor Hylton's book differs from other books in the field, what topics it covers, and who might profitably read the book. The bulk of the review provides a perspective on the book. On the positive side, Hylton has written a lucid text that fruitfully analyzes antitrust from both a legal and a traditional economic perspective. The review's critique, …
Reconceiving The Firm, Reza Dibadj
Reconceiving The Firm, Reza Dibadj
Reza Dibadj
Despite their seemingly sophisticated economics, existing theories of the firm have made for poor public policy, as witnessed by recurrent crises in corporate governance. This Article identifies and begins to remedy this gap. It argues that to make sense of organizational behavior, the firm needs to be reconceptualized as an entity that evolves norms within a social construct. Orthodox economic models of the firm remain focused on microanalytic equilibria drawn from assumptions of rationality. Institutional economics persists in erroneously modeling the firm as a series of efficient contracts. Behavioral economics treats the individual, not the firm, as the unit of …
Saving Antitrust, Reza Dibadj
Saving Antitrust, Reza Dibadj
Reza Dibadj
Commentators regularly criticize antitrust for its wobbly intellectual foundations and ineffectual results. To address this malaise, this Article attempts a new path: a systemic deconstruction of antitrust, followed by a reconstruction of the economic and institutional foundations of a new competition law. Paradoxically, saving antitrust will require looking beyond its traditions to incorporate learnings from economic regulation. First, the piece attempts to link antitrust's modern woes to two root causes: predominantly laissez-faire economics and limited institutions. Influential commentators have falsely defined antitrust's consumer welfare goal according to the strictures of neoclassical price theory, while ignoring antitrust's legislative history. In parallel, …
Beyond Facile Assumptions And Radical Assertions: A Case For Critical Legal Economics, Reza Dibadj
Beyond Facile Assumptions And Radical Assertions: A Case For Critical Legal Economics, Reza Dibadj
Reza Dibadj
This piece takes issue with the conventional wisdom that economic and critical approaches to law are incompatible. It argues that the facile assumptions behind the popular conception of law and economics, as well as the radical assertions characterizing traditional critical legal studies, mask the potential of each approach. Once stripped of this baggage, each reveals rich insights which, when combined, can serve as the basis for a new path. Critical legal economics is an interdisciplinary venture that seeks to apply the discipline of economic thought to prevent utopian speculation, while addressing a series of critical questions-around wealth disparities, information asymmetries, …
Regulatory Givings And The Anticommons, Reza Dibadj
Regulatory Givings And The Anticommons, Reza Dibadj
Reza Dibadj
The concepts of takings and the tragedy of the commons are familiar to those versed in the legal and economic literature. Only recently has scholarship begun to emerge around their less studied counterparts, givings and anticommons. For the first time, this article attempts to develop and bring together these two emerging areas of legal scholarship using the tools of law and economics. The focus is to explore how these new concepts, taken together, can create a mechanism with which to explore developments in administrative law. The piece first builds a theoretical argument as to how regulatory largesse can subtly create …