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The Structure Of Efficient Liability Rules, Satish K. Jain

Satish K. Jain

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. One, to obtain a complete characterization of efficient liability rules within the framework of a model which is essentially the standard tort model with only some minor differences; but with a liability rule notion more general than the standard one. It is shown in the paper that the subclass of efficient liability rules is characterized by the conjunction of two conditions, namely, the condition of negligence liability and the requirement of non-reward for over-nonnegligence. Negligence liability requires that if one party is exactly nonnegligent and the other party is negligent then the negligent …