Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law
Title | Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law PDF eBook |
Author | Steven Shavell |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 760 |
Release | 2009-07-01 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 0674043499 |
What effects do laws have? Do individuals drive more cautiously, clear ice from sidewalks more diligently, and commit fewer crimes because of the threat of legal sanctions? Do corporations pollute less, market safer products, and obey contracts to avoid suit? And given the effects of laws, which are socially best? Such questions about the influence and desirability of laws have been investigated by legal scholars and economists in a new, rigorous, and systematic manner since the 1970s. Their approach, which is called economic, is widely considered to be intellectually compelling and to have revolutionized thinking about the law. In this book Steven Shavell provides an in-depth analysis and synthesis of the economic approach to the building blocks of our legal system, namely, property law, tort law, contract law, and criminal law. He also examines the litigation process as well as welfare economics and morality. Aimed at a broad audience, this book requires neither a legal background nor technical economics or mathematics to understand it. Because of its breadth, analytical clarity, and general accessibility, it is likely to serve as a definitive work in the economic analysis of law.
Research Handbook on the Economics of Criminal Law
Title | Research Handbook on the Economics of Criminal Law PDF eBook |
Author | Alon Harel |
Publisher | Edward Elgar Publishing |
Pages | 273 |
Release | 2012-01-01 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 0857930656 |
Jeremy Bentham and Gary Becker established the tradition of analyzing criminal law in utilitarian and economic terms. This seminal book continues that tradition with specially commissioned, original papers that span the philosophical foundations of the use of economics in criminal law, both traditional economic perspectives and behavioral and experimental approaches to the discipline. The contributors examine and evaluate the optimal design of criminal law norms as well as the ideal structure of law enforcement institutions. They delineate what wrongs ought to be criminalized, identify the boundaries between criminal law and tort, and determine the optimal size of sanctions given the differential vulnerability of victims. They also analyze the special considerations that apply to the regulation of corporate crime, the effects of technology on crime, and the effects of the distribution of wealth on sentencing. This essential Handbook provides students and scholars of criminal law and law and economics the opportunity to explore the diversity of contemporary approaches to the economics of crime. Criminologists, sociologists and policymakers will also find it a valuable addition to their collections.
Overview and Economic Analysis of Property and Criminal Law
Title | Overview and Economic Analysis of Property and Criminal Law PDF eBook |
Author | Jenny Bourne Wahl |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Pages | 376 |
Release | 1998 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 9780815330851 |
First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
An Introduction to Law and Economics
Title | An Introduction to Law and Economics PDF eBook |
Author | A. Mitchell Polinsky |
Publisher | Aspen Publishing |
Pages | 248 |
Release | 2018-07-17 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 1543802885 |
Distinguished by brevity, lucid writing, and well-chosen examples, An Introduction to Law and Economics, now in its Fifth Edition, focuses on a set of core topics that include property, contracts, torts, criminal law, and litigation. Avoiding specialized jargon and mathematics, Polinsky teaches students how to think like an economist and understand legal issues from an economic perspective. New to the Fifth Edition: A streamlining of the products liability chapter A revised discussion of the redistributive effects of legal rules to reflect more recent scholarship on this topic The addition of several other refinements in the text and in new footnotes An updated bibliography Professors and students will benefit from: Solid coverage of relevant economic principles A normative approach that illustrates how to assess legal rules and policies in terms of economic and social goals Clear explanations of concepts
Introduction to Economic Analysis
Title | Introduction to Economic Analysis PDF eBook |
Author | R. Preston McAfee |
Publisher | Orange Grove Texts Plus |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2009-09-24 |
Genre | Economics |
ISBN | 9781616100414 |
This book presents introductory economics material using standard mathematical tools, including calculus. It is designed for a relatively sophisticated undergraduate who has not taken a basic university course in economics. The book can easily serve as an intermediate microeconomics text. The focus of this book is on the conceptual tools. Contents: 1) What is Economics? 2) Supply and Demand. 3) The US Economy. 4) Producer Theory. 5) Consumer Theory. 6) Market Imperfections. 7) Strategic Behavior.
Handbook of Public Economics
Title | Handbook of Public Economics PDF eBook |
Author | Martin Feldstein |
Publisher | Elsevier |
Pages | 744 |
Release | 2002-01-25 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0080544193 |
The Field of Public Economics has been changing rapidly in recent years, and the sixteen chapters contained in this Handbook survey many of the new developments. As a field, Public Economics is defined by its objectives rather than its techniques and much of what is new is the application of modern methods of economic theory and econometrics to problems that have been addressed by economists for over two hundred years. More generally, the discussion of public finance issues also involves elements of political science, finance and philosophy. These connections are evidence in several of the chapters that follow. Public Economics is the positive and normative study of government's effect on the economy. We attempt to explain why government behaves as it does, how its behavior influences the behavior of private firms and households, and what the welfare effects of such changes in behavior are. Following Musgrave (1959) one may imagine three purposes for government intervention in the economy: allocation, when market failure causes the private outcome to be Pareto inefficient, distribution, when the private market outcome leaves some individuals with unacceptably low shares in the fruits of the economy, and stabilization, when the private market outcome leaves some of the economy's resources underutilized. The recent trend in economic research has tended to emphasize the character of stabilization problems as problems of allocation in the labor market. The effects that government intervention can have on the allocation and distribution of an economy's resources are described in terms of efficiency and incidence effects. These are the primary measures used to evaluate the welfare effects of government policy.
Law, Economics, and Game Theory
Title | Law, Economics, and Game Theory PDF eBook |
Author | John Cirace |
Publisher | Lexington Books |
Pages | 393 |
Release | 2020-07-06 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 1498549098 |
This book considers three relationships: law and economics; economics and game theory; and game theory and law. Economists teach lawyers that economic principles cut across and integrate seemingly different legal subjects such as contracts, torts, and property. Correspondingly, lawyers teach economists that legal rationality is a separate and distinct decision-making process that can be formalized by behavioral rules that are parallel to and comparable with the behavioral rules of economic rationality, that efficiency often must be constrained by legal goals such as equal protection of the laws, due process, and horizontal and distributional equity, and that the general case methodology of economics vs. the hard case methodology of law for determining the truth or falsity of economic theories and theorems sometimes conflict. Economics and Game Theory: Law and economics books focus on economic analysis of judges’ decisions in common law cases and have been mostly limited to contracts, torts, property, criminal law, and suit and settlement. There is usually no discussion of the many areas of law that require cooperative action such as is needed to provide economic infrastructure, control public “bad” type externalities, and make legislation. Game theory provides the bridge between competitive markets and the missing discussion of cooperative action in law and economics. How? Competitive markets are examples (subset) of the Prisoners’ Dilemma, which explains the conflict between individual self-interested behavior and cooperation both in economic markets and in legislative bodies and demonstrates the need for social infrastructure and regulation of pollution and global warming. Game Theory and Law: Lawsuits usually involve litigation between two parties, not the myriad participants in markets, so the assumption of self-interest constrained by markets does not carry over to legal disputes involving one-on-one bargaining in which the law gives one party superior bargaining power. Game theory models predict the effect of different legal institutions, rights, and rules on the outcome of such bargaining. Game theory also has a natural four-model framework which is used in this book to analyze the law and economics of civil obligation, which consists of torts (negligence), contracts, and unjust enrichment.