8,065 research outputs found
Fairness Versus Welfare: Notes on the Pareto Principle, Preferences, and Distributive Justice
No full textIn Fairness versus Welfare, we advance the thesis that social policies should be assessed based entirely on their effects on individuals' well-being. This thesis implies that no independent weight should be accorded to notions of fairness (other than many purely distributive notions). We support our thesis in three ways: by demonstrating how notions of fairness perversely reduce welfare, indeed, sometimes everyone's well-being; by revealing numerous other deficiencies in the notions, including their lack of sound rationales; and by providing an account of notions of fairness that explains their intuitive appeal in a manner that reinforces the conclusion that they should not be treated as independent principles in policy assessment. In this essay, we discuss these three themes and comment on issues raised by Richard Craswell, Lewis Kornhauser, and Jeremy Waldron.
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Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law /
No full textIn 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
Economic Analysis of Accident Law
No full textAccident law is the body of legal rules governing the ability of victims of harm to sue and to collect payments from those who injured them. This paper contains the chapters on accident law from a general, forthcoming book, Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2003). The analysis is first concerned (chapters 2-4) with the influence of liability rules on incentives to reduce accident risks. Then consideration of accident law is broadened (chapter 5) to reflect the effect of liability rules on compensation of victims and the allocation of risk. In this regard a central issue is the roles of victims' insurance and of liability insurance, and how they alter the incentives inherent in liability rules. Finally, the administrative costs of the liability system, namely, the private and public legal costs of litigation, are examined (chapter 6). These costs are significant and thus bear importantly on whether use of accident law is socially desirable. It is emphasized that social intervention -- either to curtail use of the legal system or to encourage it -- may well be needed because the private incentives to use the system are generally different from the socially desirable incentives to do so.
Contractual Holdup and Legal Intervention
No full textThis article develops the point that incentive and risk-bearing problems associated with contractual holdup may justify legal intervention. Contractual holdup is considered both for fresh contracts and for modifications of contracts. One type of legal intervention is flat voiding of contracts. Such intervention tends to be advantageous when holdup situations are engineered. Another type of intervention is price-conditioned voiding of contracts—voiding only if the price is excessive. This policy tends to be advantageous when contracts are socially desirable (bad weather puts a ship in jeopardy and it needs rescue). Price-conditioned voiding prevents the imposition of holdup prices but still allows contracts (to tow ships in distress) to be made. Both types of legal intervention in contracts and their modifications are employed by courts to counter problems of pronounced holdup. In addition, various price control regulations appear partly to serve the same objective.
Fondamenti dell'analisi economica del diritto
No full textIl libro è la traduzione in italiano di "Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law" di Steven Shavell che costituisce un contributo importante per la comprensione dell'Analisi economica del diritto. Il testo presenta qualità divulgative e non include analisi complesse nè dal punto di vista della dottrina legale nè dal punto di vista dei modelli matematici. Risulta così suddiviso : Parte Prima: Diritto di proprietà. – Parte Seconda: Responsabilità per incidenti. – Parte Terza: Diritto contrattuale. – Parte Quarta: Altre applicazioni
Economic Analysis of Litigation and the Legal Process
No full textThis paper contains the chapters on litigation and the legal process from a general, forthcoming book, Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2003). In chapter 17, I consider the basic theory of litigation. Here I describe the three phases of litigation: its initiation through suit, the determination of whether the parties will settle their case or proceed to trial, and, if trial results, the trial expenditures. I also analyze the social desirability of their decisions, a major theme being that the private incentives to litigate may diverge from what is socially desirable. In chapter 18, I extend the basic theory of litigation, examining among other issues the bringing of negative value suits, shifting of legal fees to losers at trial, lawyer-client fee arrangements, and the influence of insurers on litigation. Then, in chapter 19, I discuss several general aspects of the legal process not considered in the basic theory and its extensions, including private systems of adjudication, the value of accuracy in adjudication, the appeals process, and the function of legal advice.
The Corrective Tax versus Liability As Solutions to the Problem of Harmful Externalities
No full textAlthough the corrective tax has long been viewed by economists as a theoretically desirable remedy for the problem of harmful externalities, its actual use has been limited, mainly to the domain of pollution. Liability, in contrast, has great importance in controlling harmful externalities. I compare the tax and liability here in theory and suggest that the conclusions help to explain the observed predominance of liability over taxation, except in the area of pollution. The following factors are emphasized in the analysis: inefficiency of incentives under taxes when, as would be typical, it would be impractical for the state to incorporate into taxes all of the variables that significantly affect expected harm; efficiency of incentives under strict liability, which requires only that actual harms be measured; efficiency of incentives to exercise precautions under the negligence rule; administrative cost advantages of liability deriving from its being applied only when harm occurs; and dilution of incentives under liability when suit would be unlikely or injurers would not be able to pay fully for harms caused.
Some Sound and Fury from Kaplow and Shavell
No full textIn Fairness versus Welfare, Harvard legal economists Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell argue that legal policy making should be based on social welfare, not fairness. In this review article, I claim that the authors fail to provide arguments for critical assumptions, create problems with fairness theories that do not exist, and most significantly, present an argument at war with itself. In Section I, I aver that Kaplow and Shavell\u27s paradigmatic situation hypotheticals, supposedly convincing the reader that fairness makes everyone worse off, fail at the inception. Kaplow and Shavell simply beg all the important questions. Next, I address their substantive critique of fairness theories, wherein they complain that fairness theories are incomplete and incomprehensible, and demonstrate that the unfortunate structure of their analysis creates the very incompleteness that they criticize. In Section II, I discuss Kaplow and Shavell\u27s attempt to explain away fairness as a proxy for welfare, and show this argument to rest on a non sequitur. In Section III, I demonstrate that, even assuming that fairness is a proxy for welfare, this position cannot be squared with Kaplow and Shavell\u27s accommodation of a taste for fairness. In Section IV, I conclude that despite the passion of the authors, the thoroughness of the research, and the breadth of the discussion, in the end, the book is nothing but sound and fury
Economic Analysis of the General Structure of the Law
No full textThis paper contains a chapter on the general structure of the law from a forthcoming book, Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2003). In this chapter, I consider basic features of the legal system, including whether the law directly constrains behavior or channels it by the threat of sanctions, and whether the law is brought into play by private legal action or involves public enforcement. I investigate the conditions under which one or another structure of law will be socially desirable, and I then discuss tort, contract, criminal law, and several other areas of law in the light of the analysis of the optimal structure of the law.
Steven Johnson Author Talk Poster
No full textK-State Book NetworkA poster advertising an author talk by Steven Johnson at Kansas State University on September 3, 2014. Steven Johnson's book "The Ghost Map" was the 2014-2015 common book
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