Law Commons^™

The Global Architecture Of Financial Regulatory Taxes, Carlo Garbarino, Giulio Allevato

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article endeavors to broaden the analysis of available policy tools to address the problems created by financial crises and discusses how, in addition to direct regulation, certain tax measures having a regulatory nature may operate to address the so-called “negative externalities” often associated with those crises. There is a negative externality when an economic agent making a decision does not pay the full cost of the decision’s consequences. In such cases, the cost to society as a whole is greater than the cost borne by the individuals creating the economic impact. In practice, negative externalities result in market inefficiencies …

Copyright As Contract, Jeffrey L. Harrison

Jeffrey L Harrison

Copyright is essentially a contract between the author and the public with the government acting as the agent of the public. The consideration received by authors is defined by duration and breadth of exclusivity. The consideration for the public is the creation of a "work" that will be available on a limited basis for the life of the author plus 70 years and then available without limit after that. If there were no transaction costs at all, it would be possible to "pay" authors different amounts of exclusivity. Perhaps a greeting card would get one holiday season of exclusivity, if …

Copyright As Contract, Jeffrey L. Harrison

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Copyright is essentially a contract between the author and the public with the government acting as the agent of the public. The consideration received by authors is defined by duration and breadth of exclusivity. The consideration for the public is the creation of a "work" that will be available on a limited basis for the life of the author plus 70 years and then available without limit after that. If there were no transaction costs at all, it would be possible to "pay" authors different amounts of exclusivity. Perhaps a greeting card would get one holiday season of exclusivity, if …

Can Simple Mechanism Design Results Be Used To Implement The Proportionality Standard In Discovery?, Jonah B. Gelbach

All Faculty Scholarship

I point out that the Coase theorem suggests there should not be wasteful discovery, in the sense that the value to the requester is less than the cost to the responder. I use a toy model to show that a sufficiently informed court could design a mechanism under which the Coasean prediction is borne out. I then suggest that the actual information available to courts is too little to effect this mechanism, and I consider alternatives. In discussing mechanisms intended to avoid wasteful discovery where courts have limited information, I emphasize the role of normative considerations.

Copyright As Charity, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Copyright and charity law are generally considered distinct and unrelated bodies of law. But they are actually quite similar and complement each other. Both copyright and charity law are intended to increase social welfare by solving market and government failures in public goods caused by free riding. Copyright solves market and government failures in works of authorship by providing an indirect subsidy to marginal authors, and charity law solves market and government failures in charitable goods by providing an indirect subsidy to marginal donors. Copyright and charity law complement each other by solving market and government failures in works of …

Property Rules And Liability Rules: The Cathedral In Another Light, James Krier, Stewart Schwab

Stewart J Schwab

Ronald Coase's essay on "The Problem of Social Cost" introduced the world to transaction costs, and the introduction laid the foundation for an ongoing cottage industry in law and economics. And of all the law-and-economics scholarship built on Coase's insights, perhaps the most widely known and influential contribution has been Calabresi and Melamed's discussion of what they called "property rules" and "liability rules."' Those rules and the methodology behind them are our subjects here. We have a number of objectives, the most basic of which is to provide a much needed primer for those students, scholars, and lawyers who are …

The Cathedral' At Twenty-Five: Citations And Impressions, James Krier, Stewart Schwab

Stewart J Schwab

It was twenty-five years ago that Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed published their article on property rules, liability rules, and inalienability' Calabresi, then a law professor, later a dean, is now a federal judge. Melamed, formerly a student of Calabresi's, is now a seasoned Washington attorney. Their article-which, thanks to its subtitle, we shall call The Cathedral-has had a remarkable influence on our own thinking, as we tried to show in a recent paper2 This is not the place to rehash what we said then, but a summary might be in order. First, we demonstrated that the conventional wisdom about …

Slides: Ag Water Sharing: Legal Challenges And Considerations, Peter D. Nichols

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Peter D. Nichols, Esq., Partner, Berg, Hill, Greenleaf and Ruscitti, Boulder, CO

25 slides

Slides: New Era Of Water Banking And Refined "Water Accounting", Bonnie Colby

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Professor Bonnie Colby, Departments of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona

23 slides

Copyright As Contract, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

Copyright is essentially a contract between the author and the public with the government acting as the agent of the public. The consideration received by authors is defined by duration and breadth of exclusivity. The consideration for the public is the creation of a "work" that will be available on a limited basis for the life of the author plus 70 years and then available without limit after that. If there were no transaction costs at all, it would be possible to "pay" authors different amounts of exclusivity. Perhaps a greeting card would get one holiday season of exclusivity, if …

Slides: Practicing Sustainability In Natural Resource Industries, Gary D. Libecap

Natural Resource Industries and the Sustainability Challenge (Martz Winter Symposium, February 27-28)

Presenter: Gary D. Libecap, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and Economics Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

10 slides

Coase's Twin Towers: The Relation Between The Nature Of The Firm And The Problem Of Social Cost, Stewart J. Schwab

Stewart J Schwab

Ronald Coase's The Nature of the Firm (The Firm) may well be the second most cited article in law and economics. Usually, calling something second best is a backhanded compliment. But in this case the praise is sincere, for Coase also wrote the most cited article, The Problem of Social Cost (Social Cost). Much ink has been spilled over each article. Both are justly famous, and together they make Coase a richly deserving recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. The Firm, published in 1937, is most often studied by corporate law or industrial organization specialists (although we should remember …

Intermediary Influence, Kathryn Judge

Faculty Scholarship

Ronald Coase and others writing in his wake typically assume that institutional arrangements evolve to minimize transaction costs. This Article draws attention to a powerful, market-based force that operates contrary to that core assumption: Intermediary influence." The claim builds on three observations: (1) many transaction costs now take the form of fees paid to specialized intermediaries, (2) intermediaries prefer institutional arrangements that yield higher transaction fees, and (3) intermediaries are often well positioned to promote self-serving arrangements. As a result, high-fee institutional arrangements often remain entrenched even in the presence of more-efficient alternatives.

This Article uses numerous case studies from …

Fractured Markets And Legal Institutions, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This article considers how we can improve legal outcomes of conflicts that occur in very small arenas. The conflicts can be of many kinds, including a nuisance dispute between neighbors, an impending collision between two moving vehicles, a joint decision between spouses about whether or on what terms to continue their marriage, or a disagreement between managers and shareholders within a firm.

The prevailing literature typically refers to these small environments as “markets.” Thinking of them as markets, however, averts our attention from larger environments that should be considered but that often do not function well as private markets. For …