Intellectual property law, which includes patents and copyright law, establishes the ownership of innovations by people. It conveys a bundle of rights to creators as determined by rules. Applied to intellectual property law, the normative question of growth economics is, “Which ownership rules...

This pioneering Handbook contains specially-commissioned chapters on tort law from leading experts in the field. This volume evaluates issues of vital importance to those seeking to understand and reform the tort law and the litigation process, taking a multi-disciplinary approach, including...

This thorough and detailed book provides a comprehensive analysis of the various ways in which laws and rules are produced and lays the foundations for a systematic understanding of lawmaking as a production process.

Law deters, educates, and coordinates. Economists typically focus on deterrence and sociologists often focus on education. Since deterrence causes marginal changes and education confronts relatively stable preferences, economists and sociologists may overlook law’s largest effects on...

Some crimes involve the cooperation of two or more criminals for mutual gain. Instead of deterring these crimes, the state can prevent them by creating distrust among criminals. The state should offer amnesty and a bounty to the criminal who first secures punishment of the other participant in a...

As applied by courts, the Hand Rule balances the injurer's burden of precaution and the victims' reduction in risk. In this application, risk to oneself does not increase the duty owed to others. Economists, however, use the Hand Rule to minimize social costs, which requires balancing the burden...