The modern state has monopolized the legitimate use of force. This concept is twofold. First, the state is empowered with enforcement rights; second, the rights of the individuals are restricted. In a simple model of property rights with appropriation and defense activity, we show that a...

This paper analyzes why some governments protect property rights while others do not. Although institutional constraints may affect government incentives to protect property rights, the paper emphasizes that different political institutions have dissimilar effects. Coalition institutions that...

Decisions about intervention can be understood as decisions about tolerance, because an act of tolerance is an act of nonintervention, and, conversely, an act of intervention can be understood as an act of intolerance. But acts of tolerance, typically made under conditions of epistemic...

Stock exchanges are financial institutions in rapid transition. Their organizational structure still varies to a considerable degree. This articles joins in the quest for an optimal organizational design for modern stock exchanges. From both a historical and comparative perspective it adopts,...

One of the main purposes of American labor law has been to reduce conflict between employers and workers. This paper discusses the ways in which various doctrines might serve this purpose. Four theories are examined: bargaining with asymmetric information; conflict; herding; and trust. The...

In several landmark cases, the European Court of Justice has ruled that member states of the European Union are liable for damages caused by an infringement of European Law if the violation is sufficiently serious. This article analyses the incentive effects of liability rules on member states...

This paper compares the effectiveness of regimes of strict liability and capped strict liability in an agency relationship among a regulatory agency and operators of risky activities. Under an assumption of double asymmetric information (wealth and efficiency in care effort), it shows that...

Many legal systems foster metarules of reciprocity to facilitate cooperative outcomes. This paper considers the role of reciprocity rules in various strategic environments. We start by considering the effect of reciprocity constraints in a classic prisoners' dilemma with two symmetric parties...

This paper explores the location decisions of final-good producers under imperfect contract enforcement. The legal systems'; quality is measured by the contracting environment in each country. The final producers'; location decisions create different outcomes in terms of efficiency. We find one...

We examine the importance of agents' private information about their accident proneness and action, when the principal delegates via an optimal auction the undertaking of a risky activity to an agent. A unique feature of our model is that the risk-neutral principal can provide, at no cost,...