Courts assessing compensatory damages awards often lack adequate information to determine the value of a victim's loss. A central reason for this problem, which the literature has thus far overlooked, is that courts face a dilemma when applying their standard information-forcing tool to the...

The so-called Chicago School of law and economics, which emerged in the late 1970s, was regarded by many lawyers with considerable suspicion. Much of this suspicion was due to the artificial and unrealistic nature of the assumptions about human motivation that underpinned that School’s...

This article argues that punitive, nominal, contemptuous, vindicatory, and disgorgement damages (commonly referred to as non-compensatory damages) can be collectively analysed as public interest damages because all these awards are justified by violations of public interests in addition to...

This entry for the forthcoming The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Second Edition) surveys the economic analysis of five primary fields of law: property law; liability for accidents; contract law; litigation; and public enforcement and criminal law. It also briefly considers some...

Law and economics has had a significant impact on foundational private law subjects — property, contracts, and torts — as well as advanced private law areas. This chapter analyzes how law and economics influences private law and how New Private Law (NPL) is influencing law and...

Overcriminalization takes many forms and impacts the American criminal justice system in varying ways. This article focuses on a select portion of this phenomenon by examining two types of overcriminalization prevalent in white collar criminal law. The first type of over criminalization...

In this second edition of The Economics of Law, an introduction to, and overview of, the economic analysis of law is provided. The text covers the history of the economics of law, the difference between economic and legal reasoning, basic economic concepts, and application of economics to tort...

This paper presents a model of penalties that reconciles the conflicting accounts optimal punishment by Becker, who argued penalties should internalize social costs, and Posner, who suggested penalties should completely deter offenses. The model delivers specific recommendations as to when...