Liability and safety regulation are examined as means of controlling risks in a theoretical model of the occurrence of accidents. According to the model, regulation does not result in appropriate reduction of risk -- due to the regulator's lack of knowledge about risk -- nor does liability...

Situations in which there is uncertainty over the cause of harm are studied (e.g., was the lung cancer due to normal exposure to medical x-radiation, to smoking, to exposure to carcinogens discharged by a chemical plant?); and the effects on incentives to reduce risk of various ways of treating...

Liability in tort and the regulation of safety are considered as means of controlling accident risks using the instrumentalist, economic method of analysis.Four general determinants of the relative social desirability of liability and regulation are first identified--differences in knowledge...

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 article develops two points. First, insurance against the risk of legal change is largely unavailable, primarily because of the correlated nature of the losses that legal change generates. Second, given the absence of insurance against legal change, it is generally desirable for legal...

Regulation and the negligence rule are both designed to obtain compliance with desired standards of behavior, but they differ in a primary respect: compliance with regulation is ordinarily assessed independently of the occurrence of harm, whereas compliance with the negligence rule is evaluated...