This article analyzes alternative rules for settling conflicts between right owner and a bona fide purchaser. The optimal rule, so it is argued, is the one which maximizes the expected value of the ownership right, given the risk of right violation. In order to maximize this value, one must seek...

This article analyzes alternative rules for settling conflicts between right owner and a bona fide purchaser. The optimal rule, so it is argued, is the one which maximizes the expected value of the ownership right, given the risk of right violation. In order to maximize this value, one must seek...

“How to deal with these illegal buildings?” was the question I was frequently asked in my interviews with government officials in Shenzhen, a Chinese city in which almost half of the buildings were built illegally. To demolish them has proved to be a mission impossible; to legalize them would...

It is easy to get the impression from reading economics that property generally, and property in ideas in particular, is efficient. This impression is meaningful because it suggests that there is no efficiency rationale for government regulation of any kind other than the institution and defense...

This is a survey of economic analysis of law, that is, of the emerging field under which the standard tools of microeconomics are employed to identify the effects of legal rules and their social desirability. Five basic subject areas are covered. The first is legal liability for harm. Here we...

"The law-and-economics movement remains a dominant force in American private law, despite widespread recognition that many of its assumptions are implausible and that efficiency is not the law's only goal. This book adds to the debate by showing that many leading law-and-economics arguments fail...