This paper explores the idea that adopting a law is like investing in a productive asset. Investment involves incurring a present cost in the expectation of future benefits. Legal systems can be regarded as making investment decisions when incurring present lawmaking costs that will generate...

Institutions often utilize matching rules to achieve cooperative outcomes. However, the equilibrium induced by a matching rule may not be socially optimal. After presenting the case in which matching rules yield privately and socially optimal levels of cooperation, this article identifies the...

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In several contract situations, parties exchange promises of future performance, creating reciprocal obligations. In this paper, we extend the standard models of contract remedies to consider the incentives created by contracts where both parties provide only executory consideration and where...