This is a survey of the field of economic analysis of law, focusing on the work of economists. The survey covers the three central areas of civil law - liability for accidents (tort law), property law, and contracts - as well as the litigation process and public enforcement of law

In our 1994 article in this Journal, we demonstrated that legal rules should not be adjusted to disfavor the rich and favor the poor in order to redistribute income, because the income tax and transfer system is a more efficient means of redistribution. In this article, we revisit our argument...

We analyze a model in which firms are able to acquire information about product risks and may or may not be required to disclose this information. We initially study the effect of disclosure rules assuming that firms are not liable for the harm caused by their products. Although mandatory...

This chapter of the forthcoming Handbook of Law and Economics surveys the theory of the public enforcement of law - the use of governmental agents (regulators, inspectors, tax auditors, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. The theoretical core of our analysis...

The traditional view of economists has been that corrective taxes are superior to direct regulation of harmful externalities when the state's information about control costs is incomplete. In recent years, however, many economists seem to have adopted the view that either corrective taxes or...

For the problem of percentile estimation of a quantal response curve, we determine multi-objective designs which are robust with respect to misspecifications of the model assumptions. We propose a maximin approach based on efficiencies and provide designs that are simultaneously efficient with...

We study locally D-optimal designs for some exponential models that are frequently used in the biological sciences. The model can be written as an algebraic sum of two or three exponential terms. We show that approximate locally D-optimal designs are supported at a minimal number of points and...

We construct efficient designs for the Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetic model capable of checking model assumption. An extended model, called EMAX model is also considered for this purpose. This model is widely used in pharmacokinetics and reduces to the Michaelis- Menten model for a specific...

We determine optimal designs for some regression models which are frequently used for describing 3D shapes. These models are based on a Fourier expansion of a function defined on the unit sphere in terms of spherical harmonic basis functions. In particular it is demonstrated that the uniform...

We consider a class of optimality criteria and show that each crite- rion has its unique and equivalent dual within the class. This property can be used to find a variety of optimal designs, including a class of compound optimal designs and their relationships. As an example, we show that one...