This article presents the first law and economics perspective on the topic of insurance law as a whole. In doing so it provides both an overview of insurance law as well as a discussion on the major themes of the economic analysis of insurance law and its leading cases. The paper also presents a...

What information should courts utilize when assessing contract damages? Should they award damages that were rationally foreseeable at the ex ante stage (ex ante expected damages)? Or should they award damages at the ex post level, incorporating new information revealed after contracting (ex post...

We evaluate the effect of tort reform on employer-sponsored health insurance premiums by exploiting state-level variation in the timing of reforms. Using a dataset of healthplans representing over 10 million Americans annually between 1998 and 2006, we find that caps on non-economic damages,...

Tragedy of the human commons is a special case of tragedy of the commons in which the common resource is composed of human beings. Because humans, unlike trees or fish, behave strategically and because the welfare of humans, unlike that of trees or fish, matters for its own sake, tragedy of the...

After inventing the intermittent windshield wiper, Robert Kearns tried to interest the “Big Three” automakers in licensing this technology. After rejecting his proposal, these companies all began using his patent without his permission and installing intermittent wipers on their cars. When...

Is it fair and just to charge men and women identical life insurance premiums despite their different actuarial risk? What about charging the old and the young different premiums? As entities whose core business is to classify people based on their actuarial risk, should private insurance...

This Article challenges a practice in tort law that is ubiquitous, yet little noticed—namely the use of race-based wage, life expectancy, and work-life expectancy tables when calculating damage awards. The practice results in damage awards that are significantly lower for black victims than...

Adam and Eve have the same record yet receive different punishment. Adam receives the punishment that they both deserve, whereas Eve receives a more lenient punishment. In this paper, we explore whether a deserved-but-unequal punishment, such as what Adam receives, can be just. We do this by...