During the 19th century, markets exploded liberally before the state began to intervene to compensate for undesired social deterioration. In the second half of the 19th century, however, legislation largely locked up itself, except for laws which dealt mainly with technical modernization, such...

The paper uses the findings of psychology, behavioral economics, and behavioral ethics to revisit three main related assumptions of the rational-choice approach to equity, by developing three main points: first, not only bad people try to circumvent the law; second, behavior depends on the...

This paper develops a general model of anticommons fragmentation in property. Using several related examples, we consider the equilibria obtained under different scenarios. The various illustrations are later utilized to develop a model of fragmented property. The model reveals that the private...

International copyright law must be based on an assessment of what types and levels of protection best further the purposes of copyright law. But constructing the international copyright regime is difficult as the international system must wrestle with copyright dilemmas that exist at the...

The patent system typically takes credit for motivating biopharmaceutical innovation by making it profitable, while drug regulation gets blamed for burdening innovation with bureaucratic costs and delays. But FDA regulation in fact promotes profitability by prolonging exclusivity in product...

We explore the rationale behind and the mechanisms employed by French judges while discharging personal debts in exchange for liquidation of debtors' assets. Our empirical results highlight the determinants of judicial selection between debtors whose debts are wiped out and those who have to...

Increasing access charges and transactions costs arising from monopoly rights in data and information adversely affect the conduct of science, especially exploratory research programs. The latter are critical for the sustained growth of knowledge-driven economies, and are most efficiently...

Our analysis focuses on a situation where a landowner and the government invest prior to the government's taking decision. When the government suffers from budgetary fiscal illusion, optimal compensation equals the hypothetical value of the landowner's property had she invested efficiently. In...

In a model of Coasean bargaining over externalities it is described how agents can manipulate their opponent's reservation utility by strategic actions at a pre-bargaining stage, such as the choice of a pollution technology. This may imply  misallocation of resources, and opening up trade...

The existing literature postulates that in nuisance suits courts should balance, for a property right under conflict, several values of the litigating parties. This practice, however, is controversial, mainly due to courts´ resource scarcity. This paper suggests an alternative institutional...