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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Sucker Norm, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
The Sucker Norm, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
All Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, I review the theoretical and empirical scholarship bearing on the notion of being a sucker. I suggest that there is a social norm against being a sucker, and that a number of experimental results could be reconsidered in light of this "sucker norm." First, I establish, at least for the purposes of this analysis, the basic parameters of what it means to be a sucker. Second, I consider when the fear of being a sucker is helpful or normative, and when it seems to be misapplied to cases in which it might actually lead to sub-optimal outcomes. …
How The New Economics Can Improve Employment Discrimination Law, And How Economics Can Survive The Demise Of The Rational Actor, Scott A. Moss, Peter H. Huang
How The New Economics Can Improve Employment Discrimination Law, And How Economics Can Survive The Demise Of The Rational Actor, Scott A. Moss, Peter H. Huang
Publications
Much employment discrimination law is premised on a purely money-focused "reasonable" employee, the sort who can be made whole with damages equal to lost wages, and who does not hesitate to challenge workplace discrimination. This type of "rational" actor populated older economic models but has been since modified by behavioral economics and research on happiness. Behavioral and traditional economists alike have analyzed broad employment policies, such as the wisdom of discrimination statutes, but the devil is in the details of employment law. On the critical damages-and-liability issues the Supreme Court and litigators face regularly, the law essentially ignores the lessons …
On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, And Contractual Conditions, Eric L. Talley
On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, And Contractual Conditions, Eric L. Talley
Faculty Scholarship
This article uses the recent Delaware Chancery Court case of Hexion v. Huntsman as a template for motivating thoughts about how contract law should interpret contractual conditions in general – and "material adverse event" provisions in particular – within environments of extreme ambiguity (as opposed to risk). Although ambiguity and aversion there to bear some facial similarities to risk and risk aversion, an optimal contractual allocation of uncertainty does not always track the optimal allocation of risk. After establishing these intuitions as a conceptual proposition, I endeavor to test them empirically, using a unique data set of 528 actual material …
Belief In A Just World, Blaming The Victim, And Hate Crime Statutes, Dhammika Dharmapala, Nuno Garoupa, Richard H. Mcadams
Belief In A Just World, Blaming The Victim, And Hate Crime Statutes, Dhammika Dharmapala, Nuno Garoupa, Richard H. Mcadams
Faculty Scholarship
The earliest economic theory of discrimination proposed the subsequently neglected idea of a "vicious circle" of discrimination (Myrdal,1944). We draw on psychological evidence (that people derive utility from believing that the world is just) to propose a behavioral economic model in which the vicious circle envisaged by Myrdal can arise. We demonstrate the power of this approach through an application to the issue of whether and how to justify penalty enhancements for hate crimes against members of disfavored groups. The crucial assumption is that individuals engage in biased inference in order to preserve their Belief in a Just World, thus …