This introductory chapter to Economic Models of Law (forthcoming, Edward Elgar) discusses the use of economic models for understanding law. It also provides a survey of the contents of the volume, which consist of twenty-one previously published articles in the areas of torts, contracts,...

In this paper, we investigate the impact of political decentralization and gender quota in local governance on different measures of health outcomes and behaviors. We use multiple waves of District Level Household Survey (DLHS) for two states in India, Bihar and Jharkhand, and employ...

Lucas and Rossi-Hansberg (2002) and Fujita and Ogawa (1982, 1989) develop urban models in which economic activity self-organizes due to spillovers in production. However, Fujita and Ogawa (1982, 1989) show that rents and employment density are flat or falling as the city center is approached,...

This study proposes that heterogeneous household portfolio choices within a country and across countries offer an explanation for global imbalances. We construct a stochastic growth multi-country model in which heterogeneous agents face the following restrictions on asset trade. First, the...

Liability and regulation are equally good at controlling product-related risks when consumers suffer the same expected harm and perceive risks correctly. When they misperceive risks, however, liability is preferred because the product price accurately signals risk and therefore induces efficient...

This paper examines products liability when consumers have private information about their susceptibilities to product-related harm. In this case, it is efficient for consumers to self-select in their purchases, with those especially prone to harm refraining from purchase. Achieving this outcome...

The literature on frivolous lawsuits has focused on litigation costs and the optimal settlement-trial decision of defendants, but has not examined how they affect the decisions of potential injurers. This paper asks whether there are circumstances under which frivolous suits might actually...

This paper assesses the status of education, both quantity and quality, in Bihar in both absolute terms and relative to other states in India. It then performs a regression exercise using a panel data of Indian states to identify the correlates of educational outcomes. It also surveys the...

We use a novel data set within an instrumental variables framework to test whether the presence and legal strength of constitutional environmental rights are related to environmental outcomes. The outcome variables include Yale’s Environmental Performance Index and some of its components. The...

This paper considers the role of the real housing price in the Great Depression. More specifically, we examine structural stability of the relationship between the real housing price and real GDP per capita. We test for structural change in parameter values, using a sample of annual US data from...