Law Commons^™

Are Individuals Bayesian Decision Makers?, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

There has been increasing interest in whether normative models of individual choice under uncertainty accord with actual behavior. These concerns have been much greater than in other economic contexts because of the particularly severe demands such decisions place on the rationality of the decision maker. The limitations of these decisions have widespread consequences, as they provide the rationale for many governmental efforts to regulate the risks people face. Here I explore the issues raised by a Bayesian decision framework, focusing particularly on my analyses of worker and consumer behavior.

Perspectives: Law In The Grand Manner, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Being a Supreme Court justice must have been more fun in the eighteenth century than it is today. The caseload was lighter, and the Court was a social as well as a political center., The justices also apparently felt considerably less constrained by formal or informal rules of governance. In a single case in 1796, the Court violated virtually every rule of procedure and canon of construction. Hylton v. United States2 is an obscure taxation case cited occasionally as an unilluminating pre-Marbury example of judicial review.3 It is a charming illustration of the nonchalance with which the early Court approached …

The Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdict: An Idea Whose Time Should Not Have Come, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The guilty but mentally ill verdict has received increasing attention. Several states had already passed or were seriously considering legislation establishing a guilty but mentally ill verdict before John Hinckley's 1982 acquittal vaulted the idea into national prominence. Today at least twelve states have adopted some version of the verdict and perhaps twenty others have considered or are considering similar statutes.

Yet despite the popularity of the guilty but mentally ill scheme, the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Mental Health Standards, the American Psychiatric Association Statement on the Insanity Defense,' and the National Mental Health Association's Commission on the Insanity …

Allocation Of Time And Human Energy And Its Effects On Productivity, Joni Hersch

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The supply of effort on the job has been virtually ignored as a component of the effective supply of labour. Typically, labour supply models assume the worker chooses the utility-maximizing number of hours to supply on the job as a function of a fixed wage rate which is independent of the worker's effort. This paper generalizes the worker's choice problem to include the situation in which the worker's income depends on effort exerted on the job as well as time spent on the job.

Market Incentives For Safety, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the heated atmosphere generated by inch-high headlines and multimillion-dollar liability suits, two important facts often get lost. First, society's awareness of what ensuring reasonably complete safety would cost rarely matches the intensity of its demands for such assurance. And second, the most powerful forces working to make products and workplaces safer are not the edicts of government but the dynamics of the market. True, there are situations in which the market cannot by itself create effective incentives for safety, but in the vast majority of cases it can-and does. Drawing on his extensive research into the regulation of risk, …

"New And Improved" Estimates Of Qualification Discrimination, Joni Hersch, Joe A. Stone

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The early offer reform proposal for medical malpractice provides an option for claimants to receive prompt payment of all their net economic Losses and reasonable attorney fees. Using a Large sample of closed individual medical malpractice claims from Texas supplemented by data from Florida, this article provides an empirical assessment of the consequences of the early offer reform. Noneconomic damages make up about two-thirds of paid claim amounts. The minimum payment amount for serious injuries will affect the magnitude of insurer savings and claimant compensation. Payments to claimants will be expedited by 2 years by the early offer reform, and …