Individual actors want to make their promises enforceable in order to motivate mutually profitable investments. But parties cannot easily design contracts that maximize beneficial investments and also respond appropriately to changing conditions. Although economists have designed theoretical...

This Essay examines the dramatic increase in business networks in recent decades and considers whether the law can play a useful role in supporting the efficient functioning of these inter-firm relationships for coordination and cooperation. Repeat play, reputational sanctions, and norms of...

Contracts are inevitably incomplete. And standard-form or boilerplate commercial contracts are especially likely to be incomplete because they are approximations; they are not tailored to the needs of particular deals. Not only do these contracts contain gaps but, in an attempt to reduce...

The law and economics movement has transformed the analysis of private law in the United States and increasingly around the world. As the field developed from 1970 to the early 2000s, scholars have developed countless insights about the operation and effects of law and legal institutions....

Many scholars believe that notions of fault should and do pervade contract doctrine. Notwithstanding the normative and positive arguments in favor of a fault-based analysis of particular contract doctrines, I argue that contract liability is strict liability at its core. This core regime is...

Market damages - the difference between the market price for goods or services at the time of breach and the contract price - are the best default rule whenever parties trade in thick markets: they induce parties to contract efficiently and to trade if and only if trade is efficient, and they do...