The distribution of blockbuster punitive damages awards has fat tails similar to the distributions of losses from natural disasters. Extremely large awards occur more often and are more difficult to predict than if blockbuster awards were distributed normally. The size and predictability of...

This article examines the procedures for determining damages in tort cases and assesses the empirical characteristics of these damages. Damages for economic loss involve noncontroversial economic concepts that seek to make the victim whole from a financial standpoint. Nevertheless, there is...

This article is based on my keynote address at the American Academy of Economic and Financial Experts conference in which I examined some of the implications for legal contexts of my book, Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society. The value of a statistical life (VSL) provides an economic...

State punitive damages reforms have altered how courts award punitive damages. We model the decision to award punitive damages as a two-step process involving the decision to award any punitive damages and the decision of what amount to award. For the Civil Justice Survey of State Courts samples...

This article is a Reply to the critique by Black, Hyman, and Silver (BHS) of our 2007 Journal of Legal Studies article, “An Empirical Assessment of Early Offer Reform for Medical Malpractice.” The early offer reform gives insurers the option of making an early offer that will expedite...

A substantial recent literature has documented the inability of jurors to make sound decisions with respect to punitive damages, particularly for health, safety, and environmental torts. Included in this literature are experimental studies documenting the better performance of judges than jurors...

People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinely neglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgments affect both personal and public policy decisions, e.g., choice of a transport mode, but also play a vital role in legal determinations, such as assessments of...

In this paper, we examine the influence of medical malpractice tort reform on the level of private health insurance company losses incurred. We employ a natural experiment framework centered on a series of tort reform measures enacted in Texas in 2003 that drastically altered the medical...

Calabresi's theory of tort liability (1961) as a risk distribution mechanism established insurance as an objective of tort liability. Calabresi's risk-spreading concept of tort has provided the impetus for much of the subsequent development of tort liability doctrine, including risk-utility...