Behavioral Economics Commons^™

The Data Market: A Proposal To Control Data About You, David Shaw, Daniel W. Engels

SMU Data Science Review

The current legal and economic infrastructure facilitating data collection practices and data analysis has led to extreme over-collection of data and the overall loss of personal privacy. Data over-collection has led to a secondary market for consumer data that is invisible to the consumer and results in a person's data being distributed far beyond their knowledge or control. In this paper, we propose a Data Market framework and design for personal data management and privacy protection in which the individual controls and profits from the dissemination of their data. Our proposed Data Market uses a market-based approach utilizing blockchain distributed …

The Retirement Strategy Of Supreme Court Justices: An Economic Approach, Kayla M. Joyce

Honors Scholar Theses

Previous research has identified strategic behavior in the nomination, confirmation, and retirement processes of the Supreme Court, each independently. This paper analyzes the interaction between the justices, the president, and the Senate in these processes. I constructed a game theoretic model to consider the nomination and approval process of Supreme Court justices and the change in dynamics that might result from an impending election. I hypothesize that sitting justices take into account the party affiliations of the president and the Senate when they are deciding whether it is the optimal time to retire to achieve their own strategic objectives. The …

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

A New Experiment On Rational Behavior, Myles R. Macdonald

CMC Senior Theses

Behavioral economics is widely recognized as a rising field in economics, one whose discoveries and implications are not yet completed or understood. At the same time, economic theory plays an enormous role in our governmental and legal system. In particular, the Coase Theorem and its implications have affected nearly every area in the field of law and economics. This paper proposes a experimental test of Coasean bargaining in situations using two competitive players whose payoffs depend on minimizing their costs of mitigating the externality. A rational player’s action can be predicted ahead of time, and the rationality of the game’s …

Behavioral Economic Issues In American & Islamic Marriage & Divorce Law, Ryan M. Riegg

Ryan M. Riegg

Elections And Economic Turbulence In Brazil: Candidates, Voters, And Investors, Tony Petros Spanakos, Lucio R. Renno

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The relation between elections and the economy in Latin America might be understood by considering the agency of candidates and the issue of policy preference congruence between investors and voters. The preference congruence model proposed in this article highlights political risk in emerging markets. Certain risk features increase the role of candidate campaign rhetoric and investor preferences in elections. When politicians propose policies that can appease voters and investors, elections may have a limited effect on economic indicators, such as inflation. But when voter and investor priorities differ significantly, deterioration of economic indicators is more likely. Moreover, voter and investor …

The Disadvantages Of Immigration Restriction As A Policy To Improve Income Distribution, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers frol1'l immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages fel1'wle participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary …

The Microfoundations Of Standard Form Contracts: Price Discrimination Vs. Behavioral Bias, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Standard form contracts, or contracts of adhesion, appear to provide contradictory evidence for the operation of bargaining in the markets where they are common. Non-negotiated contract terms that seemingly benefit sellers to the detriment of buyers call into question the efficiency implications of the Coase Theorem, which forms the foundation of positive law and economics. Proponents of the behavioral school of law and economics have suggested that behavioral biases, observed in experimental contexts, provide the most plausible explanation for standard form contracts. However, price discrimination might provide a more parsimonious explanation for abusive terms in contracts. If there is heterogeneity …

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

"A Nation Of Thieves": Securing Black People's Right To Shop And To Sell In White America, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"An Honest Living": Street Vendors, Municipal Regulation, And The Black Public Sphere, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …