The recent wave of behavioral economics has led some theorists to advocate the possibility of “libertarian paternalism,” in which regulators designing institutions permit significant individual choice but nonetheless use default rules to “nudge” cognitively biased individuals toward...

Originally, behavioral law and economics was an exercise in exploring the implications of key findings from behavioral economics (and psychology) for the analysis and reform of legal institutions. Yet as the new discipline matures, it increasingly replaces foreign evidence by fresh evidence,...

Hardly any antitrust lawyer would deny that antitrust needs solid foundations in economics. Antitrust authorities hire economists, if they do not even haven the position of a chief economist. Antitrust not only capitalises on economic theory, but it is equally sensitive to empirical studies, be...

Behavioral law and economics applies the conceptual tools of behavioral economics to the analysis of legal problems and legal intervention. These models, and the experiments to test them, assume an institution free state of nature. In modern societies, the law’s subjects never see this state...

Customary law has been criticized from very different angles. Rational choice theorists claim that what looks like custom is nothing but self-interest. Positivists doubt that anything beyond consent assumes the force of law. In this paper, we adopt an experimental approach to test these claims....

In two experiments we studied the effects of behavioral models on routine deviation decisions in observers. Participants repeatedly chose among four card-deck lotteries together with a human model (confederate, Exp. 1) or a non-human model (computer, Exp. 2) that made correct decisions in the...