Law and Economics Commons^™

The Electrical Deregulation Fiasco: Looking To Regulatory Federalism To Promote A Balance Between Markets And The Provision Of Public Goods, Jim Rossi

Michigan Law Review

Over the last thirty years, regulators have deregulated just about every regulated industry. In no industry has deregulation raised as much fear and concern as in electric power markets. Even before the Enron debacle, a crisis that is more about the failures of corporate than regulatory law, it was clear that something had gone seriously wrong in the turn towards deregulation of electric power. Recent events in California are illustrative. In early 2000, consumers in California, the first state to deregulate retail power markets on a mass scale, saw repeated months of power interruptions. Many utility customers experienced a risk …

Bombing Markets, Subverting The Rule Of Law: Enron, Financial Fraud, And September 11, 2001, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

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 …

Replaying The Betamax Case For The New Digital Vcrs: Introducing Tivo To Fair Use, Matthew W. Bower

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Incentives To Create Under A "Lifetime-Plus-Years" Copyright Duration: Lessons From A Behavioral Economic Analysis For Eldred V. Ashcroft, Avishalom Tor, Dotan Oliar

Journal Articles

In this Article, we highlight for the first time some of the significant but hitherto unrecognized behavioral effects of copyright law on individuals' incentives to create and then examine the implications of our findings for the constitutional analysis of Eldred v. Ashcroft. We show that behavioral biases - namely, individuals' optimistic bias regarding their future longevity and their sub-additive judgments in circumstances resembling the extant rule of copyright duration - explain the otherwise puzzling lifetime-plus-years basis for copyright protection given to individual authors, and reveal how this regime provides superior incentives to create. Thus, insofar as the provision of increased …

Cultural Tourism: Exploration Or Exploitation Of American Indians?, Kristal Markowitz

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Miss Scarlett's License Done Gone!: Parody, Satire, And Markets, Michael A. Einhorn

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Community Economic Development Movement, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Within a five-minute walk of the Stony Brook subway stop in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, you can encounter the following:

• A renovated industrial site of about five acres and sixteen buildings that serves as a business incubator for small firms that receive technical assistance from the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC), a nonprofit community development corporation, which is also housed there. Known as the Brewery after its former proprietor, a beer-maker, the complex is owned by a nonprofit subsidiary of JPNDC.
• A 44,000-foot "Stop & Shop" supermarket. The market opened in 1991 after years in which the …

Law And Regulatory Competition: Can They Co-Exist?, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

It is possible to read Stephen Choi's article with admiration and enjoyment – until a critical point is reached at its very end. In an analysis that is balanced, nuanced, and thorough, Professor Choi initially reviews the recent debate over the role of law in fostering the development of financial markets. As others have also concluded, he finds a correlation between quality of law and financial development. At a few points, he may accept too easily the claim that the common law is superior to the civil law in fostering economic growth, without adequately considering the problem of multicollinearity that …

Interpreting Indentures: How Disequilibrium Economics And Financial Asset Specificity Support Narrow Interpretation, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Conflict Of Economic Laws: From Sovereignty To Substance, Hannah Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article examines how the globalization of economic markets, and attendant changes in international regulatory strategies, challenge the traditional framework of private international law. It examines a variety of developments in the areas of securities, antitrust, and bankruptcy law, analyzing the ways in which they undermine the conception of regulatory power as grounded in the territorial authority of sovereign states. Specifically, the article argues that these changes reflect a shift in conflicts jurisprudence away from the traditional jurisdiction-selecting model and toward a substance-based model, in which a state's economic policy interests can be protected simply through assurance that the substance …

Consenting To Form Contracts, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this essay, I will identify one theoretical source of the common antipathy towards form contracts and why it is misguided. I contend that the hostility towards form contracts stems in important part from an implicit adoption of a promise-based conception of contractual obligation. I shall maintain that, when one adopts (a) a consent theory of contract based not on promise but on the manifested intention to be legally bound and (b) a properly objective interpretation of this consent, form contracts can be seen as entirely legitimate-though some form terms may properly be subject to judicial scrutiny that would be …

Trade-Related Aspects Of Intellectual Property Rights And Biotechnology: European Aspects, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

There does not seem to be a widely held view among WTO members of the proper role and scope of TRIPS. One of the main reasons why TRIPS is controversial is because it allocates rights in innovation, some would say beyond the bounds of what a trade agreement should seek to do. The lines of the debate are often conceptualized in terms of 'developing' versus 'developed' country differences. One of the major areas of disagreement is how TRIPS deals with rights in biotechnology. Some developing countries are relatively rich in biodiversity and traditional knowledge but poor in capital and scientific …

The Economics Of Private Law Harmonization, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Fable Of Entry: Bounded Rationality, Market Discipline, And Legal Policy, Avishalom Tor

Journal Articles

Legal scholars have recently advanced a behavioral approach to the law and economics school of thought, replacing the traditionally assumed rational actor with an empirically based, boundedly rational decision maker. In response, advocates of traditional law and economics have asserted that boundedly rational behavior is of little significance for the analysis of economic activities in market environments, most notably because competitive pressures will eliminate such behavior. This article argues, however, that bounded rationality has important effects on the market even under conditions of intense competition. Through a study of the competition among new entrants into industry, this analysis examines the …

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

Journal Articles

As my contribution to this symposium in David's honor, I submit the law and economics section of the damages chapter of our joint enterprise, Understanding Contracts. Because of David's failing health, my own involvement with the publisher never reached contract stage. The chapter concludes with a problem that illustrates some of the intricacies of mixing family law and contract. David and I grappled for some time with the answer to the problem, coming at it from our different points of view. On one occasion, David, with a twinkle, told me there was only one place where I was "absolutely wrong." …

International Environmental Law And Emotional Rational Choice, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This paper considers how emotions can foster compliance by rational actors with international environmental law. Many environmental issues are highly emotionally charged. Both supporters of and opponents to international environmental law often feel very strongly about their positions and views. A psychological game-theoretic model focuses on the disciplinary role that losing face may play in compliance with international environmental law. This model implies that non-compliance, especially by high-profile international actors, should be highly and swiftly publicized upon detection and verification. The model also explains why actors care so much about soft, that is, non-binding international environmental law, such as international …