The polluter-pays principle stipulates that the person who damages the environment must bear the cost of such damage. A number of developing countries have recently extended this principle to create an obligation on the state to compensate the victims of environmental harm. This variation of the...

This paper studies the potential impact on consumers of regulatory arbitrage based on financing of employment-based health insurance plans in the United States. Consumers enrolled in self-insured health plans, for which employers are financially responsible for medical claims, make up a majority...

We empirically investigate the deterrent and offsetting effects of the introduction of a point-record driving license (PDRL) in Italy. We find that the PDRL resulted in a sharp reduction of seat belt offenses, and in a noticeable decrease of road accidents. However, the reduction in occupant...

We consider a monopoly market setup with legal error, where social welfare is negatively related to a firm's expected liability costs. In this context, we investigate the optimal location of the due-care standard vis-à-vis any given desired care level. It is found that when both the due-care...

This paper examines one particular aspect of the Greek courts: the time they need to dispose cases. As an indirect measure for the time needed to dispose cases, we use the ratio of cases remaining at the end of the year to total cases introduced. Using this metric, we document a steady increase...

Eric Posner (2003) has argued that (contract) law and economics has failed to produce clear policy recommendations because its theoretical results are usually inconclusive and empirical data on the parameters are usually unavailable. Legislators and courts, however, cannot wait to make decisions...

In common law legal systems, there is no legal duty to rescue persons in danger. By contrast in code-based legal systems, the principle of duty to rescue does apply. What is behind this difference? To answer this question, we develop a new model extending the reach and strength of the standard...

The thesis that judges could (voluntarily or not) promote efficiency through their decisions has largely been discussed since Posner put it forward in the early 1970s. There nonetheless remains a methodological aspect that has never (to our knowledge) been analyzed in relation to the...

We model the settlement of a legal dispute when the trial outcome depends on the behavior of a strategically motivated judge. A defendant, who is uninformed about the level of harm that he has caused, makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer to an informed plaintiff. If the parties cannot agree on a...