A basic principle of law is that damages paid by a liable party should equal the harm caused by that party. However, this principle is not correct when account is taken of litigation costs, because they too are part of the social costs associated with an injury. In this article we examine the...

Overly strict legal standards are commonly thought to discourage parties from engaging in socially desirable activities. It is explained here, however, that excessive legal standards cannot lead to undesirable curtailment of activities when legal standards are enforced by liability for...

There is a widely held view that breach of contract is immoral. I suggest here that breach may often be seen as moral, once one appreciates that contracts are incompletely detailed agreements and that breach may be committed in problematic contingencies that were not explicitly addressed by the...

The theory of insurance is considered here when an insured individual may be able to sue another party for the losses that the insured suffered — and thus when an insured has a potential source of compensation in addition to insurance coverage. Insurance policies reflect this possibility...

When is it socially advantageous for legal rules to be changed in the light of altered circumstances? In answering this basic question here, a simple point is developed - that past compliance with legal rules tends to reduce the social advantages of legal change. The reasons are twofold:...

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 entry for the forthcoming The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Second Edition) surveys the economic analysis of public enforcement of law - the use of public agents (inspectors, tax auditors, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. We first discuss the...

Taxation and liability are compared here as means of controlling harmful externalities. It is emphasized that liability has an advantage over taxation: inefficiency of incentives arises under taxation when, as would be typical, it would be impractical for a tax to reflect all variables that...

Although the corrective tax has long been viewed by economists as a theoretically desirable remedy for the problem of harmful externalities, its actual use has been limited, mainly to the domain of pollution. Liability, in contrast, has great importance in controlling harmful externalities. I...