This paper investigates the settlement and litigation incentives of auditors under two legal regimes: the joint and several regime and the several only regime. The model's predictions are that if all defendants have full solvency, then auditors have lower expected liabilities under the joint and...

Premature dissolution can be a rational corporate response to the threat of future liability. Although early dissolution is costly to a firm, liability may be more so. The way in which liability rules can exacerbate this extreme form of liability avoidance is of interest, since "fly-by-night"...

If there has been a dominant trend in the evolution of the modern industrial societies of this century it has been the growing importance of government in the allocation of social resources. It is important that we appreciate the fundamentally political nature of the formation of government...