Regulation of the content of standard-form contracts usually focuses on the invisible terms that customers hardly ever read. It does not refer to the price, because price is a salient component of the transaction, to which customers usually pay attention and sometimes even compare between...

The law often lays down mandatory rules, from which the parties may deviate in favor of one party but not the other. Examples include the invalidation of high liquidated damages and the unenforceability of excessive non-compete clauses in employment contracts. In these cases, the law may...

Market regulation has traditionally focused on disclosure duties, and in recent years much attention has been given to nudges. However, there are increasing doubts about the effectiveness of disclosures and nudges. In response, some conclude that regulation should be abandoned altogether. An...

The basic rule in civil litigation is that the plaintiff carries the burden of proof and the general standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence. The plaintiff prevails if she establishes her case with a probability exceeding 0.5. Drawing on insights from behavioral economics and new...

Why is tort law much more developed than unjust enrichment law? Is there a reason for the very different legal treatment of governmental takings and governmental givings? Why are contract remedies structured around the four ‘interests’ and why is the disgorgement interest only marginally...

This is a chapter of our book titled Law, Economics, and Morality, in which we propose to integrate threshold deontological constraints (and options) with cost-benefit analysis (CBA), thus combining economic methodology with deontological morality. The chapter presents a constrained CBA of...

Contract interpretation and supplementation is conventionally conceived of as a multistage process, in which various sources, including express terms, course of performance, course of dealing, trade usages, default rules, and general standards of reasonableness, are sequentially resorted to. The...

The market for legal services, and particularly lawyers' Contingent Fee (CF) arrangements, have been extensively studied from legal, economic and sociological standpoints, but curiously not from a behavioral perspective. Building on Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory, this paper presents a...

This is a review of three new books on U.S. contract law and theory: Brian H. Bix, Contract Law: Rules, Theory, and Context (Cambridge 2012); Douglas G. Baird, Reconstructing Contracts (Harvard 2013); and Melvin A. Eisenberg, Foundational Principles of Contract Law (Oxford, forthcoming 2014)....

This is a chapter of our book titled Law, Economics, and Morality (OUP, 2010), in which we propose to integrate threshold deontological constraints (and options) with cost-benefit analysis, thus combining economic methodology with moderate (threshold) deontological morality. This chapter...