We evaluate the effect of tort reform on employer-sponsored health insurance premiums by exploiting state-level variation in the timing of reforms. Using a dataset of healthplans representing over 10 million Americans annually between 1998 and 2006, we find that caps on non-economic damages,...

In “Getting Incentives Right,” Bob Cooter & Ariel Porat argue that tort law, contract law, and even the law of restitution can be improved by paying better attention to parties’ incentives. If we fine-tune the incentives that private law provides, then actors will behave in a more optimal...

This paper discusses how the use of Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) can improve the quality and delivery of healthcare in America. The author states that with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 the American healthcare system is in need of re-alignment,...

This study evaluates the impact of tort reform on private health insurance coverage using the Current Population Survey’s March Demographic Files. Proponents of tort reform argue that reform will reduce medical malpractice insurance costs, damage awards, and costs associated with defensive...

Should there be pain-and-suffering damages in tort law? Most legal economists say no. Some scholars have reached this conclusion through pure theory. Others have done empirical or experimental work to explore the desirability of pain-and-suffering damages, yet they have reached the conclusion...

When insurance works properly it provides insureds with optimal incentives to prevent losses, alongside coverage for losses that could not be prevented efficiently. But insurance has an overlooked dark side to it as well. Insurers employ various tactics to shift losses to their insureds or to...

For many years the conventional wisdom on whether legal rules should be used to redistribute resources in society, or whether instead redistribution should be done exclusively through to the tax-and-transfer system, was considered an empirical question best resolved on a case-by-case basis. More...

Civil procedure serves a multitude of goals, from regulating the cost of fact gathering, to dictating the rules of advocacy in court, to promoting public participation in trials. To what extent can procedural design serve them all, or must rules sacrifice some interests to serve others? In this...

We study insurers’ behavior under monopoly and Cournot duopoly when they canaffect the probability or magnitude of harm from accidents. The way consumers’risk aversion changes with wealth and the way risk affects the slope of the demandfunction determine whether Cournot duopolists increase...