This article compares alternative liability rules for allocating losses from defective products when consumers underestimate these losses and producers may have some market power. If producers do not have any market power, the rule of strict liability is first-best. If market power is...

This article studies arrangements concerning the payment of a fee by a principal to his agent. For such an arrangement, or fee schedule, to be Pareto optimal, it must implicitly serve to allocate the risk attaching to the outcome of the agent's activity in a satisfactory way and to create...

This article studies rules of "damage measures" that determine how much money must be paid by a party who defaults on a contract to the other party to the contract. The theme of the article is that damage measures serve as a substitute for completely specified contracts. In particular, it is...

The question considered in this article is how liability rules and insurance affect incentives to reduce accident risks and the allocation of such risks. This question is examined when liability is strict or based on the negligence rule; and, if first-party and liability insurance are available,...