In most of the contract theory literature, contracting costs are assumed either to be high enough to preclude certain forms of contracting, or low enough to permit any contract to be written. Similarly, researchers usually treat renegotiation as either costless or prohibitively costly. This...

In most of the contract theory literature, contracting costs are assumed either to be high enough to preclude certain forms of contracting or low enough to permit any contract to be written. Similarly researchers usually treat renegotiation as either costless or prohibitively costly. This...

This Essay briefly reviews where law and economics has been, and then sets out important problems it now faces. My primary theme is that law and economics faces two culture problems: between scholars who self- identify as being in a field - contracts, torts - and who do not use economics in...

The common law developed over centuries a small set of default rules that courts have used to fill gaps in otherwise incomplete contracts between commercial parties. These rules can be applied almost independently of context: the market damages rule, for example, requires a court only to know...

Contract law encourages parties to make relation-specific investments by enforcing the contracts the parties make, and by denying liability when the parties had failed to agree. For decades, the law has had difficulty with cases where parties sink costs in the pursuit of projects under...