There is broad, though not universal, agreement that widespread voter ignorance and irrational evaluation of evidence are serious threats to democracy. But there is deep disagreement over strategies for mitigating the danger. 'Top-down' approaches, such as epistocracy and lodging more authority...

There is an enormous literature analyzing the choice between rules and standards in drafting legal directives. This literature typically focuses on public government-made legal directives such as statutes, regulations, and judicial opinions; it has devoted less attention to privately-drafted...

Conventional wisdom suggests that allowing offenders to choose alternative sanctions to a previously existing punishment cannot enhance deterrence, because offenders can simply select the least costly option available. We experimentally test whether people may perceive punishment menus as more...

The US patent system is a foundation of our nation's economy, encouraging innovation and growth. The exclusive right to use and license an invention provides numerous benefits to its inventor and to the broader economy. The patent system is not costless, however, and significant costs stem from...

The overruling of prior case law is one of the most dramatic events in a common-law system, and the rate of overrulings is often considered an important measure of legal change. To measure this process more precisely, and thereby elucidate the relationship between legal doctrines of stare...

The economic analysis of civil procedure can be enriched by a more thorough consideration of the productive functions of civil adjudication. The previous literature has recognized that civil adjudication does have products – conventionally described as dispute resolution services, plus...

F.A. Hayek focused on many traditional economic questions, and also made important contributions to law and economics. His framework differed from Kaldor Hicks efficiency and the wealth maximization norm common among neoclassical law and economics scholars. But he talked about how the common law...

U.S. law requires federal regulators to perform cost-benefit analysis of new rules proposed to correct market failure. As Coase convincingly showed decades ago, the inefficiencies of market failure can be usefully attributed to the costs of transacting. This essay proposes a novel and relatively...

In this paper we study the strengths and weaknesses of the matching-reservations mechanism introduced by Article 21 of the Vienna Convention. When states face asymmetric incentives, the rules introduced by the Vienna Convention may not discourage all reservations. We also analyze the welfare...

This article is part of a symposium on the work of Gordon Tullock, to be held in connection with the presentation to Tullock of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders at the Atlas Research Foundation, for his contributions to the study of spontaneous...