The paper focuses on the problem of valuing human life, as advocated by economists and certain lawyers, and its implications for the computation of damages in tort law cases. It uses a statement by Richard Posner in order to illustrate the approach commonly employed in law and economics:...

From an economic perspective tort law is to serve two important functions: deterrence of wrongdoers and victim compensation. We can easily construct examples of torts leading to small and widespread harm for which it is questionable whether a rational victim will initiate an individual lawsuit....

The law-and-economics movement has made a huge impact on the scholarship of contract law in the US. But compared to their US counterparts, English legal scholars are less enthusiastic about adopting the economic approach in their research. Existing studies have rarely, from an economic...

We characterize the comparative efficiency of industry self-regulation as means of social control of torts. Industry self-regulation is, unlike liability, which is imposed by courts ex post, similar to government regulation in that self-regulation acts before the harm is done. However, the...

This paper develops an original mean-variance model able to capture the disposition of the parties towards both standard risk and ambiguity. Ambiguity arises when the causal link between conduct and harm is not univocal, as is frequently the case with toxic torts. Risk aversion and ambiguity...

In the law and economics literature liability is generally regarded as an instrument which provides potential tortfeasors with incentives for optimal care taking. The question, however, arises whether liability can still provide those incentives when risks are unknown. That is the central...

The Tort system and especially Product Liability is a socially costly tool to provide manufacturers with incentives for safety. Recently, it has been argued that market reputation could, to a significant extent, constitute a cheaper alternative to Product Liability. Our paper departs from the...