Harsh sanctions are conventionally assumed to primarily benefit vulnerable targets. Contrary to this perception, this article shows that augmented sanctions often serve the less vulnerable targets. While decreasing crime, harsher sanctions also induce the police to shift enforcement efforts from...

Harsh sanctions are conventionally assumed to primarily benefit vulnerable targets. Contrary to this perception, this article shows that augmented sanctions serve principally the less vulnerable targets. While decreasing crime, harsher sanctions also induce the police to shift enforcement...

Transitivity is a fundamental requirement for consistency. Legal systems, especially when composed over time and by different agencies, may encounter non-transitive cycles. This paper discusses a new solution to such cycles, namely setting the hierarchy of the relevant rules or preferences. The...

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...

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...

Lawyers' Contingent Fee (CF) rates are rather uniform, often one-third of the recovery. Arguably, this uniformity is a type of anti-competitive price-fixing, which results in clients paying supra-competitive fees. This paper challenges this argument. It shows that uniform CF rates provide...

This paper analyzes alternative rules for settling conflicts between right owner and a bona-fide purchaser. The optimal rule, so it is argued, is the one which maximizes the expected value of the ownership right, given the risk of right-violation. In order to maximize this value, one must seek...

In deciding whether to grant a preliminary injunction courts compare the expected irreparable harm if the injunction is not issued to the irreparable harm that would result if the injunction is issued. An injury is considered irreparable only as far as it quot;cannot be cured by a remedy after...

Economic analysis of contract law offers an influential argument against imposing a duty to disclose information and in support of guaranteeing reimbursement (break-up fees) for pre-contractual investments in acquiring information. According to the conventional wisdom, a negotiating party...

This article challenges the plausibility of one of the cornerstones of the law and economics literature the prospect of under-investment in precontractual reliance (PCR). It shows that a negotiating party may well be motivated to invest in PCR not only through her expectation to extract the...