The Austrian contribution to the development of law and economics is the study of endogenous rule formation, or the spontaneous evolution of social institutions, which can be traced to the founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger. While Menger's emphasis on spontaneous institutional analysis...

Is the common law efficient? Neoclassical economists debate whether our inherited systems of judge-made law maximize wealth whereas Austrian economists typically adopt much different standards. The article reviews neoclassical and Austrian arguments about efficiency in the common law. After...

Behavioral Law & Economics (BLE) has loudly proclaimed its victory over traditional law & economics methodologies. Nowhere has this proclamation been so loud or self-certain as with respect to claims about consumer financial decision-making. Drawing on a set of casual observations styled as...

In this paper we provide an explanation for why the Chapter 11 reorganization process cannot accurately value and reorganize an insolvent firm. Due to the information and incentive vacuum of the reorganization process, Chapter 11 places the bankruptcy judge is in the same institutional setting...

A growing number of state governors are voicing concern about the damage inflicted on their states' budgets—on both the revenue and the expenditure sides—by the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation is particularly dire for the many states that entered the current crisis with “preexisting...

In this article we examine the merits the arguments furthered by the field of behavioral law and economics over credit card surcharge fees. Claims about the real-world application of behavioral economic theories should not be uncritically accepted — especially when advanced to challenge a...

This congressional testimony summarizes the effects on consumers and the economy of Dodd-Frank, the Durbin Amendment the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other government regulations (such as the CARD Act of 2009) enacted in the wake of the recent financial crisis. The testimony notes...

“Behavioral Law and Economics” (BLE) is a specialized component of the legal literature that purports to base its conclusions on a branch of economic analysis known as behavioral economics. The central claim of BLE is that by applying findings of behavioral economics to the real world it can...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a data point update of its ongoing analyses of overdrafts. We review the report and provide commentary on its findings, methodology and the inferences of this update, specifically the potential to further restrict debit card overdrafts. We...