Settlements are often considered to be welfare-enhancing because they save time and litigation costs. In the presence of court error, however, this conclusion may be wrong. Court decisions create positive externalities for future litigants which will not occur if a dispute is settled out of...

The law of torts plays an important role in completing the legal property rights system by defining the extent to which property is protected from harm. It does this by defining the kinds of interests that will be recognized and protected from harm by the courts, the duty of care owed these...

The standard economic model of bilateral precaution concludes that (in the absence of uncertainty, misperception, or error) all negligence-based liability rules induce socially optimal behavior by both injurers and victims. This paper generalizes the standard model to consider situations in...

Proponents of environmental policies based on liability assert that strict liability imposed on polluters induces firms to handle hazardous wastes properly. We run regressions relating unintended pollution releases to strict liability imposed on polluters, exploiting variation across states and...

Via technology and operations standards, U.S. regulation exerts an important influence over worldwide marine safety standards. But in addition, several other aspects of U.S. law deserve wider international consideration and adoption. First, the Oil Pollution Act’s natural resource damage...

Proponents of environmental policies based on liability assert that strict liability imposed on the polluter will induce firms to handle hazardous wastes properly and to avoid disposing them into the environment. Economic theory and a few well-publicized cases, however, suggest that a number of...

Financal assurance rules, also known as financial responsibility or bonding requirements, foster cost internalization by requiring potential polluters to demonstrate the financial resources necessary to compensate for environmental damage that may arise in the future. Accordingly, assurance is...

Storm-related service outages in electricity and telecommunications have created public controversies regarding the adequacy of ex ante efforts to prevent outages and ex post efforts to restore power. Product liability rules, used to promote quality of service throughout the economy, might seem...

This paper uses detailed longitudinal data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) stretching from 1998 to 2008 to analyze the relationship between working hours and family happiness in Korea. The Korean labor market is characterized by high levels of gender inequality which is...

In spite of extended parental leaves, tremendous improvement in day-care availability, and a cultural climate that is supportive of women's full-time work, Norwegian women still have one of the highest female part-time rates in Europe. Longer working hours among women would clearly alleviate the...