The economic approach to law relies on the use of economic models, mostly mathematical, for understanding the nature and function of law. The articles in this collection reflect state-of-the-art modeling techniques and explore how to use these to both formulate important questions and resolve...

Debtors’ prisons have been commonplace throughout history, including in the United States. While imprisonment for debt no doubt elicited some repayment by benefactors of the debtor, we argue that its primary function was to deter default in the first place by giving borrowers an incentive to...

Redemption laws give mortgagors the right to redeem their property following default for a statutorily set period of time. This article develops a theory that explains these laws as a means of protecting landowners against the loss of nontransferable values associated with their land. A longer...

Economic models of crime and punishment implicitly assume that the government can credibly commit to the fines, sentences, and apprehension rates it has chosen. We study the government's problem when credibility is an issue. We find that several of the standard predictions of the economic model...