This chapter examines the economics of property rights and property law. It shows how the economics of property rights can be used to understand fundamental features of property law and related extra-legal institutions. The chapter examines both the rationale for legal doctrine, and the effects...

Attorney advertising routinely targets tort victims. This paper reviews the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on attorney advertising, and develops a theoretical model that incorporates advertising intensity, litigation costs, and an endogenous number of lawsuits. Since advertising induces victims...

Until the seventeenth century, the Ottomans used fines extensively for law enforcement and employed agents to collect the fines. Fines can be costly to implement because of agency problems and corruption. To solve the problem of corruption, the Ottomans implemented a variety of mechanisms,...

This paper examines statutes that limit the liability of landowners who open their property for recreational use. We ask whether landowner immunity promotes efficient provision by owners and efficient entry by recreational users. We examine these questions in several contexts, depending on...

This chapter examines the economics of property rights and property law. It shows how the economics of property rights can be used to understand fundamental features of property law and related extra-legal institutions. The chapter examines both the rationale for legal doctrine, and the effects...

This study examines the traditional compensation model for real estate brokers under which both the listing and buyer brokers are paid by the seller based on a percentage of the property sales price. We argue that this model has not evolved to reflect contemporary legal agency relationships and...

The decisive oath is an interesting but little-known element in some legal proceedings, mostly in civil law traditions. It is different from ordinary (testimonial) oaths that are routinely administered to witnesses at trial with the aim of eliciting only truthful testimony, but which are of...

Under certainty, unlimited duration of private ownership of land provides landowners with efficient development incentives. However, in cases of ownership risk arising from title mistakes, fraud, boundary encroachment, or adverse possession, the statute of limitations sets a limit on how long...

The salvage of historic shipwrecks involves a debate between salvors, who wish to maximize profit, and archaeologists, who wish to preserve historical value. Traditionally, salvage of shipwrecks has been governed by admiralty law, but the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 transferred title of...