This Abstract introduces the authors' new book, The Sarbanes-Oxley Debacle: What We've Learned; How to Fix It (The AEI Press 2006). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (quot;SOXquot;) is a colossal failure, poorly conceived and hastily enacted during a regulatory panic. Everyone now concedes that the...

A major problem with the current environmental regulatory regime is that it does not provide a reliable process for determining or discovering either the optimal amount of pollution or the most efficient means for achieving the selected level of pollution. This Article explains how the common...

In most areas, economists look to competition to align incentives, but not so with courts. Many believe that competition enables plaintiff forum shopping, but Adam Smith praised rivalry among courts. This article describes the courts when the common law developed. In many areas of law, courts...

Twenty-five years ago Richard Epstein published Simple Rules for a Complex World, which would go on to become one of Epstein's most influential works. This essay, prepared for a conference and symposium to celebrate the anniversary of the book, applies the insights of Simple Rules in the context...

Should law be provided centrally by the state or by some other means? Even relatively staunch advocates of competition such as Friedrich Hayek believe that the state must provide law centrally. This article asks whether Hayek’s theories about competition and the use of knowledge in society...

“Behavioral Law and Economics” (BLE) is a specialized component of the legal literature that purports to base its conclusions on a branch of economic analysis known as behavioral economics. The central claim of BLE is that by applying findings of behavioral economics to the real world it can...

Methodological individualism underpins economic analysis. In his paper in this volume, however, Douglas Glen Whitman demonstrates that group selection can be reconciled with methodological individualism. This essay extends Whitman's analysis in two ways. First, it summarizes and restates the...

The authors argue that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is a colossal failure, yet seek to salvage some lessons from the ruins of SOX.

The authors argue that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is a colossal failure, yet seek to salvage some lessons from the ruins of SOX.

Thisbookexplores the effects of current regulatory policies and proposes a radical restructuring of the environmental regulatory authority.