The effect of Civil law doctrines of precedent on the process of formation and evolution of case law is examined. Unlike the Common law systems, Civil law jurisdictions do not adopt a stare decisis principle in adjudication. In deciding any given legal issue, precedents serve a persuasive role....

In a dispute involving multifarious points of disagreement, courts have the discretion to adjudicate issues separately in multiple, sequential proceedings or all-at-once in a single unitary proceeding. In this paper, we contrast the effects of sequential and unitary trials on parties' decisions...

Litigation aims at resolving conflicts. In this chapter we survey the law and economics literature on litigation to illustrate the scope of application of rent-seeking models and their analytical power in the study of law and procedural issues of litigation, including applications in adversarial...

Shavell (1980) established that tort regimes fail to incentivize optimal activity levels. The bearer of residual loss adopts a socially optimal activity level; however, the nonbearer of residual loss will adopt an excessive level. We explore alternative liability rules, which distribute the cost...

Shavell (1980) established that all existing tort regimes fail to incentivize optimal activity levels. The bearer of residual loss adopts a socially optimal activity level, however the non-bearer of residual loss will adopt an excessive level of activity. In this paper, we explore alternative...

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...

In this paper, we illustrate how different behavioral problems can be incorporated into the standard economic model of tort law. Through this exercise, we develop a modeling language that can be utilized by law and economic scholars when considering the effect of behavioral biases and cognitive...

In this paper, we analyze the impact of past accident experiences on individual care choices. By relying on standard economic theory, we posit three hypotheses: (1) individual choice of efficient care; (2) no accident-history effect; (3) no role-reversal effects. We test these three hypotheses...

This paper is about the incentive effects of legal presumptions. We analyze three interrelated effects of legal presumptions in a tort setting: (1) incentives to invest in evidence technology; (2) incentives to invest in care-type precautions; and (3) incentives to mitigate excessive activity...

Economic models of tort law evaluate the efficiency of liability rules in terms of care and activity levels. A liability regime is optimal when it creates incentives to maximize the value of risky activities at the net of accident and precaution costs. The allocation of primary and residual...