New data on medical malpractice claims against a single hospital in which a direct measure of the quality of medical care is available are used to investigate the roles of the negligence rule and incomplete information in the dispute settlement process in medical malpractice. We find that the...

We investigate how personal bankruptcy law affects small firms' access to credit. When a firm is unincorporated, its debts are personal liabilities of the firm's owner, so that lending to the firm is legally equivalent to lending to its owner. If the firm fails, the owner has an incentive to...

Scholars in the field of law and economics have developed an extensive theoretical literature on the effects of liability rules in accident law, but have done little testing of their theoretical models. In this article, I develop an empirically testable model of the incentives for injurers and...