Most formal law and economic analysis evaluates legal rules solely on the basis of "efficiency." The prevailing … justification for this focus is that -- as a matter of economic theory -- "equity" goals are best accomplished through the income … tax, rather than the legal system. In opposition to that view, we argue that economic theory provides no reason to favor …

We demonstrate the existence of an intergenerational equity-efficiency trade- off in policy-making that aims at Pareto-efficiency … of sustainability problems and policy: (i) temporal irreversibility, i.e. the inability to re- vise one’s past actions …”. If initially unforeseen sustainability problems become apparent and policy is enacted after irreversible ac- tions were …