In this Article, we focus on an important problem involving mass-accident cases that was highlighted by the Deepwater Horizon litigation: overuse of courts to enforce contribution claims. These claims seek to shift incurred or expected liability and damages between the business and governmental...

This article was prepared as a contribution to the Chapman Law Review's symposium on “Libertarian Legal Theory.” While libertarian legal theory and law and economics share many affinities there are places in which both the method of the common law and the substantive rules of the common law...

A century ago, captains of industry and their allies in government launched a social experiment in urban America: the abandonment of mass transit in favor of a new personal technology, the private automobile. Decades of investment in this shift have created a car-centric landscape with...

This paper contains the chapters on public enforcement of law and on criminal law from a general, forthcoming book, Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2003). By public law enforcement is meant the use of public law enforcement agents - such as police, tax...

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the main instrument to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. Subject to a country specific limit, installations in the EU ETS can use EU allowances (EUA) and certified emissions reductions (CERs) generated through the Clean Development Mechanism...

This paper consists of the introductory chapter of a forthcoming book, The Economic Dynamics of Law (Cambridge University Press 2012). The book proposes a macroeconomic approach to law as suitable for creating rules embodying normative commitments over long time periods. This chapter explains...

This paper is in two parts. The first part is a report written in 1989 for the UK Department for Transport (DTp) to consider the way non fatal accidents should be treated in project evaluations. At the time, the DTp had adopted an economic approach to the costing of fatalities based on the...

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...

In this paper, we study the law and economics of cyber risk pooling arrangements: risk sharing without an insurer. We start our discussion with the current theoretical foundations for risk shifting in cyber security. We subsequently discuss cyber risk pooling in relation to individual risk...