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Full-Text Articles in Law and Economics

Insuring Against Terrorism -- And Crime, Saul Levmore, Kyle D. Logue Jan 2003

Insuring Against Terrorism -- And Crime, Saul Levmore, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

The attacks of September 11th produced staggering losses of life and property. They also brought forth substantial private-insurance payouts, as well as federal relief for the City of New York and for the families of individuals who perished on that day. The losses suffered during and after the attacks, and the structure of the relief effort, have raised questions about the availability of insurance against terrorism, the role of government in providing for, subsidizing, or ensuring the presence of such insurance, as well as the interaction between relief and the incentives for taking precautions against similar losses in the future. …


The Stumbling Block: Freedom, Rationality, And Legal Scholarship, Jeanne L. Schroeder Oct 2002

The Stumbling Block: Freedom, Rationality, And Legal Scholarship, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

The article critiques the dominance of policy-oriented legal scholarship, particularly in law and economics, arguing that it oversimplifies human behavior by focusing on predictable, instrumental rationality. It advocates for a more balanced approach that incorporates jurisprudential, theoretical, and doctrinal scholarship, drawing on speculative theory from Continental philosophy and psychoanalysis to provide a richer understanding of rationality and human subjectivity. The author suggests that critical legal scholarship could be revitalized by engaging with thinkers like Kant, Hegel, and Lacan, who offer deeper insights into freedom, spontaneity, and the symbolic order.


Corporate Governance And Executive Remuneration: Rediscovering Managerial Positional Conflict, Jennifer Hill, Charles M. Yablon Jul 2002

Corporate Governance And Executive Remuneration: Rediscovering Managerial Positional Conflict, Jennifer Hill, Charles M. Yablon

Articles

The article critiques the assumption that performance-based executive remuneration aligns managerial and shareholder interests, arguing that executives' positional power allows them to exploit such systems, leading to excessive pay and corporate malfeasance. It highlights how this conflict of interest contributed to major corporate collapses like Enron and One.Tel, emphasizing the need for reforms beyond current governance mechanisms.


A Control-Based Approach To Shareholder Liability For Corporate Torts, Nina A. Mendelson Jan 2002

A Control-Based Approach To Shareholder Liability For Corporate Torts, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

Some commentators defend limited shareholder liability for torts and statutory violations as efficient, even though it encourages corporations to overinvest in and to externalize the costs of risky activity. Others propose pro rata unlimited shareholder liability for corporate torts. Both approaches, however, fail to account fully for qualitative differences among shareholders. Controlling shareholders, in particular, may have lower information costs, greater influence over managerial decisionmaking, and greater ability to benefit from corporate activity. This Article develops a control-based approach to shareholder liability. It first explores several differences among shareholders. For example, a controlling shareholder can more easily curb managerial risk …


Economic Rationality, Empathy, And Corporate Responsibility, Jeanne L. Schroeder Jan 2002

Economic Rationality, Empathy, And Corporate Responsibility, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

Judge Richard A. Posner - the doyen of the law and economics movement - is probably the leading proponent of the hypothesis that legal subjects act as if they were economically rational. Over the years, however, Posner's conception of rationality has devolved from end-means reasoning by a conscious individual human actor, to unconscious instinct which is, nevertheless, beneficial to an individual subject (animal or human) to the mechanistic reproductive activity of individual genes which may or may not be beneficial to either the organism of which the gene is a part - or even to the gene itself. Indeed, all …


The Economic Analysis Of Evidence Law: Common Sense On Stilts, Richard O. Lempert Dec 2001

The Economic Analysis Of Evidence Law: Common Sense On Stilts, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

There was a time when the empire of Law was not overrun by economists. The economists had their own fiefdoms to be sure-there was the Duchy of Antitrust and the Kingdom of Regulatory Law-but the economists lived in peace within these borders, welcoming many unlike themselves into their midst, only gently proselytizing their students in the first few classes of a term, and swearing fealty to the law. It is true that a few marauders from beyond the borders saw the wealth of the empire and sought to colonize it, but even the most daring, Archbishop Coase and Duke Gary …


Chief Judge Edward R. Becker: A Truly Remarkable Judge, Marci A. Hamilton May 2001

Chief Judge Edward R. Becker: A Truly Remarkable Judge, Marci A. Hamilton

Articles

No abstract provided.


Law, Economics, And The Skeleton Of Value Fallacy, Kyron Huigens Mar 2001

Law, Economics, And The Skeleton Of Value Fallacy, Kyron Huigens

Articles

Experiments in the last decade or so have demonstrated persistent failures on the part of ordinary individuals rationally to pursue self-interest. The experiments pose serious challenges to economics, rational choice theory, and the law and economics school. Some experiments, for example, suggest an "endowment effect", that contradicts the Coase Theorem; the notion that, in the absence of transaction costs, goods will find their most efficient distribution regardless of their initial assignment. Cass Sunstein has collected a set of essays by economists and legal scholars exploring these challenges, in a volume entitled Behavioral Law and Economics.


The Uneasy Marriage Of Export Incentives And The Income Tax, Mihir A. Desai, James R. Hines Jr. Jan 2001

The Uneasy Marriage Of Export Incentives And The Income Tax, Mihir A. Desai, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

This paper investigates the economic effect of tax incentives for American exports. These incentives include a partial tax exemption for export profits (available by routing exports through foreign sales corporations) and the allocation of some export profits to foreign-source income for purposes of U.S. taxation. The analysis highlights three important aspects of these policies. First, official figures appear to understate dramatically the tax expenditures associated with some U.S. export incentives. Correctly measured, total export benefits provided through the income tax are equivalent to a 1-percent ad valorem subsidy. Second, the 1984 imposition of more rigorous requirements for obtaining export subsidies …


The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller Jan 2001

The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Following the Civil War, black Americans began acquiring land in earnest; by 1920 almost one million black families owned farms. Since then, black rural landownership has dropped by more than 98% and continues in rapid decline-there are now fewer than 19,000 black-operated farms left in America. By contrast, white-operated farms dropped only by half, from about 5.5 million to 2.4 million. Commentators have offered as partial explanations the consolidation of inefficient small farms and intense racial discrimination in farm lending. However, even absent these factors, the unintended effects of old-fashioned American property law might have led to the same outcome. …


The Current Life Insurance Crisis: How The Law Should Respond, Kyle D. Logue Jan 2001

The Current Life Insurance Crisis: How The Law Should Respond, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

This article explores some of the issues raised by the new evidence of underinsurance. Part I explores the initial theoretical question: why do people buy life insurance? Put differently, what function does life insurance serve? Part II provides some background on the life insurance market as it currently exists. Thus, Part II summarizes the major types of life insurance that are currently offered and summarizes the main elements of the current regulatory regime for life insurance companies. Part III then provides support for the claim that households tend to drastically underconsume life insurance. Section A of that Part summarizes the …


Rationality In Law And Economics Scholarship, Jeanne L. Schroeder Apr 2000

Rationality In Law And Economics Scholarship, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

Jeanne L. Schroeder critiques Richard Posner's conception of rationality in law and economics, arguing that his broad and evolving definition dilutes the concept, rendering it too vague and analytically weak. She advocates for a more nuanced approach that integrates psychological insights and acknowledges the limitations of traditional economic models. Schroeder emphasizes the need for empirical accuracy and theoretical rigor, challenging Posner's dismissal of behavioral economics and his reliance on evolutionary biology for explanations of irrational behavior.


A Presumption Of Innocence, Not Of Even Odds, Richard D. Friedman Jan 2000

A Presumption Of Innocence, Not Of Even Odds, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Now I know how the Munchkins felt. Here I have been, toiling in the fields of Evidenceland for some years, laboring along with others to show how use of Bayesian probability theory can assist in the analysis and understanding of evidentiary problems.' In doing so, we have had to wage continuous battle against the Bayesioskeptics-the wicked witches who deny much value, even heuristic value, for probability theory in evidentiary analysis.2 Occasionally, I have longed for law-and-economics scholars to help work this field, which should be fertile ground for them.3 So imagine my delight when the virtual personification of law and …


Analyze This: A Law And Economics Agenda For The Patent System, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 2000

Analyze This: A Law And Economics Agenda For The Patent System, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

Legal scholars and economists might enhance the value and impact of their work by making more effective use of each other's knowledge and capabilities. Legal scholars can offer a more nuanced understanding of the legal rules that underlie the patent system and the doctrinal levers that might be manipulated in furtherance of public policy goals. Economists bring to bear a set of analytical and methodological tools that could shed considerable light on what these doctrinal levers are doing and which of them we ought to be manipulating. Together, we have a better chance of asking the right questions and thinking …


Three Faces Of Private Property, Michael A. Heller Jan 2000

Three Faces Of Private Property, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Private property is a rather elusive concept. Any kid knows what it means for something to be mine or yours, but grownup legal theorists get flustered when they try to pin down the term. Typically they, actually we, turn to a familiar analytic toolkit: including, for example, Blackstone's image of private property as "sole and despotic dominion"; Hardin's metaphor of the "tragedy of the commons"; and, more generally, the division of ownership into a trilogy of private, commons, and state forms. While each analytic tool has a distinguished pedigree and certain present usefulness, each also imposes a cost because it …


The Tentative Case Against Flexibility In Commercial Law, Omri Ben-Shahar Jan 1999

The Tentative Case Against Flexibility In Commercial Law, Omri Ben-Shahar

Articles

Well-rooted in modern commercial law is the idea that the law and the obligations that it enforces should reflect the empirical reality of the relationship between the contracting parties. The Uniform Commercial Code ("Code") champions this tradition by viewing the performance practices formed among the parties throughout their interaction as a primary source for interpreting and supplementing their explicit contracts. The generous recognition of waiver and modifications, as well as the binding force the Code accords to course of performance, course of dealings, and customary trade usages, effectively permits unwritten commercial practices to vary and to erode explicit contractual provisions.


Economics V. Equity: Do Market-Based Environmental Reforms Exacerbate Environmental Injustice?, Stephen M. Johnson Jan 1999

Economics V. Equity: Do Market-Based Environmental Reforms Exacerbate Environmental Injustice?, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

For almost three decades, the federal government and state governments have addressed environmental problems primarily through "command and control" regulation. Under this traditional approach, the federal government establishes uniform national pollution limits ("command") that the federal or state governments impose on individual polluters through a system of permits or other controls. However, as the command and control approach has eliminated many of the most prolific sources of pollution, the incremental cost of cleaning up the remaining pollution has risen dramatically, and command and control regulation has become politically less attractive. In addition, command and control regulation may be too rigid …


The Midas Touch: The Lethal Effect Of Wealth Maximization, Jeanne L. Schroeder Jan 1999

The Midas Touch: The Lethal Effect Of Wealth Maximization, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

The article critically examines the concept of wealth maximization in law and economics, arguing that it is fundamentally flawed due to its inability to account for the distinction between exchange value and use value. Wealth maximization, rooted in the masculine regime of possession and exchange, represses the feminine act of enjoyment, leading to a paradox where achieving its goal would result in the collapse of the market system. The analysis draws on Lacanian theory to explore the sexual impasse underlying this paradox, suggesting that the pursuit of wealth without consideration for enjoyment is self-destructive and unsustainable.


In Praise Of The Efficiency Of Decentralized Traditions And Their Preconditions, John O. Mcginnis Jan 1999

In Praise Of The Efficiency Of Decentralized Traditions And Their Preconditions, John O. Mcginnis

Articles

No abstract provided.


The End Of The Market: A Psychoanalysis Of Law And Economics, Jeanne L. Schroeder Dec 1998

The End Of The Market: A Psychoanalysis Of Law And Economics, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

The perfect market is the end of all actual markets - it is their ideal form. In normative economics, actual markets are the means of achieving the end or ideal of the perfect market. But this means that to achieve a perfect market would result in the end of all actual markets. Despite the centrality of the ideal of the perfect market in the subset of law and economics scholarship based on classical price theory, there is surprisingly little literature on its parameters. In this Commentary, Professor Schroeder examines this literature in order to explicate the nature of this ideal. …


An Economic Analysis Of Intellectual Property Rights: Justifications And Problems Of Exclusive Rights, Incentives To Generate Information, And The Alternative Of A Government Run Reward System, Steve Calandrillo Jan 1998

An Economic Analysis Of Intellectual Property Rights: Justifications And Problems Of Exclusive Rights, Incentives To Generate Information, And The Alternative Of A Government Run Reward System, Steve Calandrillo

Articles

This article examines and questions the traditional justifications for intellectual property (I.P.) rights in America (focusing on copyright and patent law), and explores incentives necessary to induce the creation of these works of information. I conclude that changes are needed to I.P. law in order to best foster society's dual goals of 1) promoting incentives to create I.P. works (such as currently patented drugs), while also 2) maximizing distribution of those products to all consumers who would stand to gain (and not merely those who can afford the monopoly price charged). Hence, I suggest the creation of a Government-Run Reward …


A Critique Of The Proposed National Tobacco Resolution And A Suggested Alternative, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue Jan 1998

A Critique Of The Proposed National Tobacco Resolution And A Suggested Alternative, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

The first criticism is that the proposed resolution would not require manufacturers and, in tum, consumers to pay anything approaching the true total costs of cigarettes, costs that we estimate to be at least $7 per pack, a number that is considerably higher than other estimates that have been reported in the media. Our estimate includes some, but not all, of the costs borne ultimately by smokers themselves, by smokers' insurers, and by individuals injured by second-hand smoke. It includes only future costs and excludes many of those. So, for example, the figure includes neither the health-care costs that have …


The Costs Of Cigarettes: The Economic Case For Ex Post Incentive-Based Regulation, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue Jan 1998

The Costs Of Cigarettes: The Economic Case For Ex Post Incentive-Based Regulation, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

Cigarette smoking causes over 420,000 deaths annually in the United States, roughly twenty percent of all U.S. deaths, making cigarettes the single greatest preventable cause of death in this country. Indeed, tobacco kills more people every year than alcohol, illicit drugs, automobile accidents, violent crime, and AIDS combined. And not only are cigarettes deadly to smokers; they kill nonsmokers as well. According to a recent report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the "sidestream" or "passive" smoke from cigarettes - so-called environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - is responsible annually for approximately 3000 lung cancer deaths, between 150,000 and 300,000 lower …


Smokers' Compensation: Toward A Blueprint For Federal Regulation Of Cigarette Manufacturers, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue, Michael S. Zamore Jan 1998

Smokers' Compensation: Toward A Blueprint For Federal Regulation Of Cigarette Manufacturers, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue, Michael S. Zamore

Articles

Although nothing is certain in Washington, sweeping federal legislation in the cigarette area is more likely now than has ever been the case. Congress is currently considering several proposals for comprehensive federal regulation of the cigarette market, a market that has until now gone largely untouched by government intervention. Among those proposals, the one that has received the most attention, and the one that in fact motivated policy makers to look anew at the problems posed by cigarettes, is the proposed national tobacco resolution (the "Proposed Resolution"). The Proposed Resolution, which has been advanced by a coalition of state attorneys …


Economic Analysis Of Evidentiary Law: An Underused Tool, An Underplowed Field (Symposium: The Economics Of Evidentiary Law), Richard D. Friedman Jan 1998

Economic Analysis Of Evidentiary Law: An Underused Tool, An Underplowed Field (Symposium: The Economics Of Evidentiary Law), Richard D. Friedman

Articles

The law and economics movement has had a major impact on many areas of law, but rather little on the law of evidence. This is not to say that there have been no attempts to analyze evidentiary issues through an economic lens,' but such efforts are far more scattered in evidence than in other legal fields, including the closely related one of civil procedure.2 Believing that economics has value for evidentiary analysis, I suggested to the Executive Committee and Advisory Board of the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools ("AALS"), when I was chairman of the section, …


Corporate Judgement Proofing: A Response To Lynn Lopucki's 'The Death Of Liability', James J. White Jan 1998

Corporate Judgement Proofing: A Response To Lynn Lopucki's 'The Death Of Liability', James J. White

Articles

In "The Death of Liability" Professor Lynn M. LoPucki argues that American businesses are rendering themselves judgment proof.- Using the metaphor of a poker game, Professor LoPucki claims American businesses are increasingly able to participate in the poker game without putting "chips in the pot." He argues that it has become easier for American companies to play the game without having chips in the pot because of the ease with which a modern debtor can grant secured credit, because of the growth of the peculiar form of sale known as asset securitization, because foreign havens for secreting assets are now …


The Original Constitution And Its Decline: A Public Choice Perspective, John O. Mcginnis Oct 1997

The Original Constitution And Its Decline: A Public Choice Perspective, John O. Mcginnis

Articles

Public choice offers an analysis of the Constitution that is broadly consonant with an important aspect of the Framers' own approach. The Framers' values were those largely of the Scottish enlightenment: they believed in progress of civilization-the accumulation of wealth and knowledge. In order to create a structure of society that would accomplish these ends, they relied on another Enlightenment axiom, namely that man is an object of natural science. By understanding the predictable manner in which individuals are likely to behave in given situations, the Framers could shape a constitution that would channel their behavior to meet their Enlightenment …


Technological Change And Doctrinal Persistence: Telecommunications Reform In Congress And The Court, Monroe E. Price, John F. Duffy May 1997

Technological Change And Doctrinal Persistence: Telecommunications Reform In Congress And The Court, Monroe E. Price, John F. Duffy

Articles

In recent years, both the Supreme Court and the Congress have made much of the rapid pace of technological change within the telecommunications industry. In passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996, for example, Congressional leaders described these changes in almost millennial terms, predicting that "convergence" of communications technologies would beget a new regulatory world in which telecommunications technologies would no longer be regulated in a piece-mea4 media-specific fashion, but rather as part of a unified, coherent scheme. The Supreme Court, likewise, has portrayed changes in telecommunications technology as reason to move its First Amendment jurisprudence away from media-specific categories and …


Economically Targeted Investments: A Critical Analysis, Edward A. Zelinsky Jan 1997

Economically Targeted Investments: A Critical Analysis, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

No abstract provided.


The Unsolved Problem Of The Unfunded Mandate, Edward A. Zelinsky Jan 1997

The Unsolved Problem Of The Unfunded Mandate, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

No abstract provided.