This is a survey of economic analysis of law, that is, of the emerging field under which the standard tools of microeconomics are employed to identify the effects of legal rules and their social desirability. Five basic subject areas are covered. The first is legal liability for harm. Here we...

The possibility that individuals may derive utility from the mere fact of holding wealth has long been recognized. A simple intertemporal model featuring utility from accumulation is used here to examine consumption and savings, the choice between inter vivos gifts and bequests (both to...

This paper considers the optimal tax treatment of voluntary transfers to individuals in a" framework that integrates redistributive income taxation and estate and gift taxation. Under this" formulation, redistributive considerations become secondary. The optimal tax treatment of" transfers...

Prominent theory research on voting uses models in which expected pivotality drives voters’ turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs’s paradox: in practice, many individuals turn out for reasons unrelated to...

Does taxation for public goods generally involve a distortionary cost? Are Pigouvian taxes desirable because they raise revenue without having to resort to distortionary taxes? Should decisions concerning public goods or Pigouvian taxes depend on whether their incidence is regressive? The answer...

Economic analysis of competition regulation is most developed in the domain of horizontal mergers, and modern agency guidelines reflect a substantial consensus on the appropriate template for merger assessment. Nevertheless, official protocols are understood to rest on a problematic market...

This article explores the many ways that entry is relevant to horizontal merger analysis.Only one, however, is part of the current canon, and it is handled incorrectly. The analysisdraws on work in industrial organization economics that examines entry in imperfectlycompetitive markets. Ex post...

Specialized theoretical and empirical research should in principle be embedded in a unified framework that identifies the relevant interactions among different phenomena, enables an appropriate matching of policy instruments to objectives, and grounds normative analysis in individuals’...

Legal change, whether through legislation, regulation, or court decision, is a common phenomenon, and virtually all reform creates both gains and losses for those who under the prior regime took actions that would have lasting effects. This article offers a conceptual framework for assessing the...