Law and Economics Commons^™

Markets As A Moral Foundation For Contract Law, Nathan B. Oman

Nathan B. Oman

No abstract provided.

Exclusive Dealing, The Theory Of The Firm, And Raising Rivals' Costs: Toward A New Synthesis, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Apple Pay, Bitcoin, And Consumers: The Abcs Of Future Public Payments Law, Mark Edwin Burge

Mark Edwin Burge

As technology rolls out ongoing and competing streams of payments innovation, exemplified by Apple Pay (mobile payments) and Bitcoin (cryptocurrency), the law governing these payments appears hopelessly behind the curve. The patchwork of state, federal, and private legal rules seems more worthy of condemnation than emulation. This Article argues, however, that the legal and market developments of the last several decades in payment systems provide compelling evidence of the most realistic and socially beneficial future for payments law. The paradigm of a comprehensive public law regulatory scheme for payment systems, exemplified by Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial …

Bankruptcy On The Side, Kenneth Ayotte, Anthony J. Casey, David A. Skeel Jr.

Kenneth Ayotte

This article provides a framework for analyzing side agreements in corporate bankruptcy, such as intercreditor and “bad boy” agreements. These agreements are controversial because they commonly include a promise by one party to remain silent – to waive some procedural right they would otherwise have under the Bankruptcy Code – at potentially crucial points in the reorganization process. Using simplified examples, we show that side agreements create benefits in some instances, but parties to a side agreement may have incentive to contract for specific performance or excessive stipulated damages that impose negative externalities on non-parties to the agreement. A promise …

Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo

José Gabilondo

During the last financial crisis, what should the Federal Reserve (the Fed) have done when lenders stopped making loans, even to borrowers with sterling credit and strong collateral? Because the central bank is the last resort for funding, the conventional answer had been to lend freely at a penalty rate against good collateral, as Walter Bagehot suggested in 1873 about the Bank of England. Acting thus as a lender of last resort, the central bank will keep solvent banks liquid but let insolvent banks go out of business, as they should. The Fed tried this, but when the conventional wisdom …

Tortious Interference And The Law Of Contract: The Case For Specific Performance Revisited, Deepa Varadarajan

Deepa Varadarajan

What is the role of contract law in remedying breach? The question of the appropriate legal remedy, specific performance versus money damages, has provided adequate fodder for three decades of debate in the law and economics discourse. In the legal discipline at large, the topic has spurred centuries of debate, as illustrated by Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous line: “The only universal consequence of a legally binding promise is, that the law makes the promisor pay damages if the promised event does not come to pass.” Holmes's approach to contractual remedy would evolve during the latter half of the twentieth century …

Consumer Protection Initiatives In The Eu Mortgage Market: A Behavioral Economics Based Critique And Proposal, 25 Temp. Int'l & Comp. L.J. 1 (2011), Debra Pogrund Stark, Jessica M. Choplin

Debra Pogrund Stark

No abstract provided.

Contrato, Operación Económica Y Equilibrio Contractual, Carlos Tamani

Carlos Tamani

Commodification And Contract Formation: Placing The Consideration Doctrine On Stronger Foundations

David Gamage

Under the traditional consideration doctrine, a promise is only legally enforceable if it is made in exchange for something of value. This doctrine lies at the heart of contract law, yet it lacks a sound theoretical justification – a fact that has confounded generations of scholars and created a mess of case law. This paper argues that the failure of traditional justifications for the doctrine comes from two mistaken assumptions. First, previous scholars have assumed that anyone can back a promise with nominal consideration if they wish to do so. We show how social norms against commodification limit the availability …

On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet), Lynn Stout

Lynn A. Stout

In their 1932 opus "The Modern Corporation and Public Property," Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously documented the evolution of a new economic entity—the public corporation. What made the public corporation “public,” of course, was that it had thousands or even hundreds of thousands of shareholders, none of whom owned more than a small fraction of outstanding shares. As a result, the public firm’s shareholders had little individual incentive to pay close attention to what was going on inside the firm, or even to vote. Dispersed shareholders were rationally apathetic. If they voted at all, they usually voted to approve …

Dirty Debts Sold Dirt Cheap, Dalie Jimenez

Dalie Jimenez

More than 77 million Americans have a debt in collections. Many of these debts will be sold to debt buyers for pennies, or fractions of pennies, on the dollar. This Article details the perilous path that debts travel as they move through the collection ecosystem. Using a unique dataset of 84 consumer debt purchase and sale agreement, it examines the manner in which debts are sold, oftentimes as simple data on a spreadsheet, devoid of any documentary evidence. It finds that in many contracts, sellers disclaim all warranties about the underlying debts sold or the information transferred. Sellers also sometimes …

Bubbles (Or, Some Reflections On The Basic Laws Of Human Relations), Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Keepings, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

The Influence Of Law And Economics Scholarship On Contract Law: Impressions Twenty-Five Years Later, Jeffrey L. Harrison

Jeffrey L Harrison

This is an update of a work done in conjunction with a contract law conference 25 years ago. My specific assignment was to assess the impact of law and economics scholarship on contract law. I responded by conducting an empirical study of judicial citations to selected law and economics works in order to ascertain the extent to which judges seemed to be relying on the teachings of law and economics. In effect, the effort was part of a general question that concerns all law professors: Does scholarship matter? I have repeated the study with respect to the scholarship sample selected …

Theories And Practices Of Islamic Finance And Exchange Laws: Poverty Of Interest, Ahmed E. Souaiaia

Ahmed E SOUAIAIA

Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill

Steven Davidoff Solomon

One big focus of attention, criticism, and proposals for reform in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has been securities disclosure. Many commentators have emphasized the complexity of the securities being sold, arguing that no one could understand the disclosure. Some observers have noted that disclosures were sometimes false or incomplete. What follows these issues, to some commentators, is that, whatever other lessons we may learn from the crisis, we need to improve disclosure. How should it be improved? Commentators often lament the frailties of human understanding, notably including those of everyday retail investors—people who do not understand or …

Hollywood Deals: Soft Contracts For Hard Markets, Jonathan Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

Hollywood film studios, talent and other deal participants regularly commit to, and undertake production of, high-stakes film projects on the basis of unsigned “deal memos”, informal communications or draft agreements whose legal enforceability is uncertain. These “soft contracts” constitute a hybrid instrument that addresses a challenging transactional environment where neither formal contract nor reputation effects adequately protect parties against the holdup risk and project risk inherent to a film project. Parties negotiate the degree of contractual formality, which correlates with legal enforceability, as a proxy for allocating these risks at a transaction-cost savings relative to a fully formalized and specified …

Gambling On Our Financial Future: How The Federal Government Fiddles While State Common Law Is A Safer Bet To Prevent Another Financial Collapse, Brian M. Mccall

Brian M McCall

Penalty Defaults In Family Law: The Case Of Child Custody, Margaret F. Brinig

Margaret F Brinig

This paper considers whether an amendment to state divorce laws that strengthens its joint custody preference operates as a traditional default rule, specifying what most divorcing couples would choose or as a penalty default rule the parties will attempt to contract around.

While the Oregon statutes that frame our discussion here, like most state laws, do not state an explicit preference for joint custody, shared custody is certainly encouraged by Section 107.179, which refers cases in which the parties cannot agree on joint custody to mediation and by Section 107.105, which requires the court to consider awarding custody jointly. In …

"Money Can't Buy Me Love": A Contrast Between Damages In Family Law And Contract, Margaret F. Brinig

Margaret F Brinig

No abstract provided.

La Preconfiguración Del Contrato: Una Propuesta De Definición De Las Reglas Predeterminadas En El Derecho De Contratos, Daniel A. Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

Liquid Assets: A Coasian Economic Analysis Of Oregon's Allocation Of Conserved Water Program, Richard A. Grisel

Richard A Grisel

Diversions for residential, agricultural, recreational, commercial, industrial, and other beneficial uses have had the effect of removing water from rivers and tributaries throughout the western U.S. Another, more recent, competing use is ecological, demonstrated by the legal recognition of instream beneficial uses in some jurisdictions. As awareness of the progressively acute need for reallocation has increased in the arid West, so has interest in water markets and other mechanisms to facilitate transfers across beneficial uses. However, governments and water users face a legacy prior appropriation system that prohibits instream beneficial uses, encourages maximal diversion, stifles water right fungibility, and generally …

Sea Changes In Consumer Financial Protection: Stronger Agency And Stronger Laws, Dee Pridgen

Dee Pridgen

This article tracks the rising influence of behavioral economics as a guiding force in consumer protection. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency, formed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, is a new and stronger agency for consumers. Two pieces of legislation, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act (Title XIV of Dodd-Frank), and the Credit Card Accountability , Responsibility and Disclosure Act (Credit CARD Act) of 2009, are stronger laws ensuring the safety of consumer financial products. This article examines the new agency and the new laws, explains how they differ from the prior governmental …

The Property Platform In Anglo-American Law And The Primacy Of The Property Concept, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Article proposes that the property concept, when reduced to its basic principles, is a foundational element and a useful lens for evaluating and understanding the whole of Anglo-American private law even though the discrete disciplines—property, tort, and contract—have their own separate and distinct existence. In this Article, a broad property concept is not focused just on things or on sticks related to things but instead is defined as relating to all things owned. These things may include one’s self and all the key elements associated with this broader set of things owned—including the right to exclude, ownership, dominion, authority, …

Certainty Of Title: Perspectives After The Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis On The Essential Function Of Effective Recording Systems, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Recording systems for property play a pivotal, market-facilitating role for the players engaged in any transaction, the judiciary that must resolve disputes between the players, and others members of the general public by informing each about the true nature of ownership of the real property things in the world. This symposium article explores the essential character of such systems in providing certainty of title, and takes a tour through the mortgage foreclosure crisis to see where adherence to and respect for these systems’ roles broke down. Leading up to the crisis, as securitization became vogue and the housing boom blurred …

‘Jogalkotási Javaslatok Megfogalmazása A Jogtudományban’ [Policy Proposals And Legal Scholarship], Péter Cserne, György Gajduschek

Péter Cserne

This is the manuscript of a chapter written for a Hungarian handbook on legal scholarship. It provides an historical overview and a theoretical defense of a policy oriented, in contrast to doctrinal, study of law. The chapter also provides an introduction to the foundations and methodological tools of public policy analysis, including regulatory impact assessment.

Capitalización De Intereses Y Cierre De La Cuenta Corriente Bancaria, Martin Paolantonio

Martin Paolantonio

Se analiza la cuestión a propósito de un caso que llegó incluso a la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación. Esencialmente, el tema pasa por la interpretación de la norma que autoriza la capitalización de intereses, sin una referencia expresa a su vigencia luego del cierre de la cuenta corriente bancaria.

Gaming The System: Bio-Economics, Game Theory, & Fisheries Management, Richard A. Grisel

Richard A Grisel

This paper argues that game theory provides powerful, effective new tools to analyze externalities that occur in the context of strategic, multi-party, interactive decision-making. I will attempt to treat this as a non-technical paper and avoid the complex mathematics better left to economists and mathematicians. Instead, a more achievable goal is to illustrate how high-seas open-access fishing is virtually identical to a game situation, treat the fundamentals of game theory, and demonstrate that game theoretic analyses are well-suited and fruitful for designing effective policy responses to fisheries management, particularly with respect to the straddling stocks problem. Indeed, one seminal fisheries …

Attorney-General Of Pakistan - A Brief Overview, Umair Ghori

Umair H. Ghori

The legal system of Pakistan represents a fusion of the Shariah law and common law systems. Traditionally, the Pakistani legal system adapted the pre-1947 colonial law for local use. Amendments to these colonial laws, in particular inspired by the Islamic traditions, have been interspersed in intervals. As a result, the Pakistan legal system retains fundamental common law doctrines (such as binding precedent and delegated legislation) while gradually integrating laws of Islamic origin within the existing common law framework. However, Pakistan's legal system is far from being a complete mirror of the English legal system. One such major distinction is that …

El Homo Economicus Y La Libertad De Contratación, Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Se compartió la mesa con el profesor Juan José Martínez, en la presentación se debatió acerco del rol que cumple el presupuesto de racionalidad en el modelo standard del análisis económico del Derecho y las acotaciones del Behavioral Law and Economics.