This essay explores how liability insurance mediates the boundary between torts and crime. Liability insurance sometimes separates these two legal fields, for example through the application of standard insurance contract provisions that exclude insurance coverage for some crimes that are also...

We survey the theoretical and empirical literature on the law and economics of liability insurance. The canonical Shavell model predicts that, despite the presence of some ex ante moral hazard (care-reduction by insureds), liability insurance will generally raise welfare because its...

The use of bribes to co-opt an enemy's forces can be a more effective way to wage war than the conventional use of force: Relative to bombs, bribes can save lives and resources, and preserve civic institutions. This essay evaluates the efficacy and normative desirability of selectively...

The Supreme Court's trilogy of evidence cases, Daubert, Joiner, and Kumho Tire appear to mark a significant departure in the way scientific and expert evidence is handled in federal court. By focusing on the underlying methods used to generate the experts' conclusions, Daubert has the potential...

In the United States insurance is regulated both by state insurance commissions and class action litigation. The interaction of these two systems has not been extensively studied. We examine four different facets of the regulation litigation tradeoff. The first is to examine whether a...

This article reports and explains four key findings about the difference between the role of insurance in mass tort litigation and the role of insurance in ordinary tort and corporate governance litigation as reported in earlier research: (1) outside of the insolvency context, mass tort...

The growing economic importance of technical standards has heightened the need for a better understanding of why they succeed or fail. While existing literature has scrutinized the role of public governance, particularly in the realms of regulation, antitrust, and intellectual property, to date...

The present period of financial instability is also likely to become known as the end of an era, an era of economic calm and of policy consensus on how to maintain market stability. After World War II, the federal government operated on the Keynesian principles that the right mix of spending,...

The announcement by the Reserve Primary Fund, in September 2008, that it was “breaking the buck,” triggered a widespread withdrawal of assets from other money market funds and led the U.S. Government to adopt emergency measures to maintain the stability of the short term credit markets. In...

While other countries dismantled their segmented housing finance systems and linked housing finance to capital markets through deregulated depositories, the US linked housing finance to capital markets through depository deregulation and securitization. Elsewhere securitization has not...